THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 

Ugcnte 
THE  BAKER  &  TAYLOR  COMPANY 

NEW  TOBK 

CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON   AND   EDINBUBGH 


BOOKS  BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


General  Sociology 

Adam  Smith  and  Modern  Sociology 

The  Cameralists,  the  Pioneers 
of  German  Social  Polity 


THE  MEANING  OF 
SOCIAL  SCIENCE 


By 
ALBION  W.  SMALL 


^R^;^ 


1^ 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 


''^1 


GENERAL 


^a 


Copyright  iqio  By 
The  University  of  Chicago 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Published  November  1910 


Composed  and  Printed  By 

The  University  of  Chicago  Press 

Chicago,  Illinois,  U.S.A. 


These  lectures  were  heard  by  a  company  of 
graduate  students  drawn  from  all  the  social 
science  departments.  In  variety  of  viewpoints  a 
group  so  made  up  fairly  represents  the  larger 
public  to  which  appeal  is  now  taken.  The  argu- 
ment is  addressed  to  all  thinkers  who  are  mature 
enough,  both  mentally  and  morally,  to  recognize 
the  complexity  of  social  problems. 

The  lectures  are  printed  just  as  they  were  de- 
livered. If  transitions  from  technicality  to 
colloquialism  are  occasionally  rather  abrupt,  they 
are  merely  cases  of  academic  freedom  in  sacri- 
ficing elegance  to  force. 

A.  W.  S. 

The  University  of  Chicago 
June  IS,  1910 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

LECTURE  PAGE 

I.  The  Ui^ty  of  Social  Science       .     .     .     .       i 
II.  The  Disunity  of  the  Social  Sciences   .     .32 

III.  The  Sociological  Reassertion  of  the  Unity 

OF  Social  Science 55 

IV.  The  Center  of  Orientation  in  Social  Science    86 

V.  The  Social  Sciences  as  Terms  in  One  For- 
mula        116 

VI.  The  Descriptive  Phase  of  Social  Science  .   149 

VII.  The  Analytical  Phase  of  Soclal  Science  .  179 

VIII.  The  Evaluating  Phase  of  Social  Science    .  214 

IX.  The  Constructive  Phase  of  Social  Science  244 

X.  The  Future  of  Social  Science    .     .     .     .272 

Index 301 


LECTURE  I 
THE  UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

Several  years  ago  it  occurred  to  me  that  more 
ought  to  be  done  in  the  way  of  defining  the  things 
which  the  students  of  social  science  have  in  com- 
mon. I  was  impressed  by  items  of  evidence  which 
came  to  me  with  monotonous  rhythm,  that  stu- 
dents in  our  own  social  science  departments  were 
not  turning  the  opportunities  afforded  by  our 
rather  minute  division  of  labor  to  their  best  ad- 
vantage. Instead  of  using  the  means  available 
for  getting  a  wide  survey  of  the  field  and  of  the 
methodology  of  social  science  in  general,  the  typi- 
cal graduate  student  in  social  science  is  satisfied 
to  confine  himself  rather  closely  within  the  bounds 
of  two  departments.  The  consequence  is  that 
he  is  unfortunately  provincial  about  social  sci- 
ence as  a  whole. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  the  work  of  our  social 
science  group  would  be  much  more  intelligent  if 
every  candidate  for  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Phi- 
losophy in  social  science  should  survey  the  whole 
field  of  social  science  some  time  during  his  grad- 
uate years,  from  the  standpoint  of  each  grand 
division  of  social  science,  and  under  the  guidance 
of  a  representative  of  each  division. 


2  THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

As  my  own  contribution  to  such  opportunity,  I 
announced  a  course  of  lectures,  intended  particu- 
larly for  graduate  students  in  social  science,  and 
aiming  to  exhibit  the  interconnections  of  problems 
in  social  science  as  they  appear  from  the  soci- 
ologists' viewpoint.  The  hearers  whom  I  had 
in  mind  were  those  graduate  students  who  did 
not  elect  courses  in  the  Department  of  Soci- 
ology. It  was,  and  still  is,  my  hope  that  the 
other  departments  in  our  social  science  group 
may  from  time  to  time  offer  similar  sur- 
veys from  their  particular  standpoints.  If  even 
these  meager  reports  of  the  schemes  of  labor  em- 
ployed by  the  several  departments  should  receive 
due  attention  from  the  graduate  students  of  all 
the  departments,  the  effect  could  not  fail  to  be 
liberalizing. 

My  announcement  of  a  course  of  lectures  once 
a  week  for  a  quarter  stood  several  years  in  the 
group  circular,  but  it  appears  to  have  been  an 
offering  for  which  there  was  no  demand.  As  the 
preparation  of  the  lectures  would  have  cost  neg- 
lect of  other  work,  and  as  I  could  not  be  sure 
that  the  things  left  undone  would  be  less  impor- 
tant, I  had  no  sufficient  motive  for  carrying  my 
theory  into  practice. 

This  year,  however,  some  of  the  graduate  stu- 
dents took  notice  of  my  announcement,  and  called 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  3 

on  me  to  fulfil  my  promise.  After  having  received 
assurance  that  there  would  be  enough  hearers  to 
make  the  experiment  respectable,  I  very  gladly 
took  up  the  work.  In  order  to  be  able  to  say  in 
fifty-five  minutes  enough  fairly  to  outline  the 
aspect  of  the  subject  treated  in  each  lecture,  I  shall 
be  obliged  to  write  out  my  discussion  in  full,  and 
to  read  it  carefully,  in  preference  to  adopting  the 
conference  method.  The  latter  manner  lends  it- 
self, in  my  case  at  any  rate,  to  elaboration  but 
not  to  compression. 

Although  these  lectures  will  be  written,  they 
will  not  be  formal,  and  of  course  they  can  be 
only  a  sketchy  treatment  of  the  general  subject 
of  the  series.  They  will  be  virtually  very  sum- 
mary and  superficial  talks  about  a  theme  which 
could  be  treated  exhaustively  only  in  a  number 
of  volumes.  This  does  not  mean  that  I  shall 
present  hasty  thinking.  What  I  shall  say  has 
been  taking  shape  and  changing  shape  in  my 
mind  over  and  over  again  since  I  began  as  a 
college  student  to  puzzle  over  some  of  the  rela- 
tions which  I  shall  discuss.  Only  the  expression 
of  the  thought  will  be  extemporized  from  week  to 
week  in  the  fragments  of  time  that  my  other  work 
will  allow  for  putting  the  argument  on  paper. 

The  lectures  will  contain  a  good  deal  of 
repetition;  repetition  not  merely  of  things  which 


4  THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

are  the  stock  ideas  or  phrases  of  all  who 
have  studied  sociology  in  the  restricted  sense, 
but  repetition  from  lecture  to  lecture  of  leading 
conceptions  which  must  recur  throughout  the 
course.  These  conceptions  indeed  indicate  the 
associations  of  ideas  which,  the  sociologists  main- 
tain, correspond  with  the  correlations  of  reality. 
It  is  a  large  part  of  the  sociologist's  function  in 
social  science,  as  he  sees  it,  to  win  for  these  ideas 
their  due  share  of  attention.  He  does  not  believe 
that  it  will  always  be  necessary  for  sociologists  or 
anyone  else  to  harp  on  these  ideas  as  insistently 
as  the  sociologists  find  it  needful  now.  He  hopes 
and  even  believes  that  many  of  the  categories 
for  whose  meaning  he  is  now  obliged  to  contend 
will  some  time  have  passed  into  the  fund  of 
authoritative  commonplaces  which  may  be  sched- 
uled as  the  "lapsed  intelligence"  of  social  science. 
He  anticipates  that  they  will  some  time  have  so 
passed  into  the  habits  of  thought  in  social  science 
that  no  one  would  think  of  disregarding  or  even 
of  debating  them,  any  more  than  we  would  debate 
whether  the  multiplication  table  is  invariable. 

Meanwhile  we  are  in  that  stage  of  scientific 
juvenility  in  which  we  are  groping  rather  unsys- 
tematically  after  the  axioms  of  human  experi- 
ence. I  have  chosen  ten  points  of  departure  at 
which  to  drive  down  stakes  for  preliminary  sur- 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  5 

veys  in  social  science.  In  each  of  the  lectures  I 
shall  have  the  wholeJeld-el-social  science  in 
view,  and  shall  try  to  make  it  visible  to  my  hear- 
ers. At  the  same  time  I  shall  try  to  make  it  self- 
evident  that  I  am  asking  you  to  fix  your  eye 
on  the  particular  stake  to  which  the  lecture  is 
devoted ;  and  in  each  case  I  shall  try  to  help  you 
visualize  the  whole  area  of  social  science  from  the 
outlook  of  that  particular  stake. 

As  intimated  just  now,  the  original  announce- 
ment of  the  course  spoke  of  it  as  intended  princi- 
pally for  graduate  students  who  had  not  elected 
courses  scheduled  in  our  announcements  as  socio- 
logical. I  have  sketched  these  lectures  in  accord- 
ance with  that  plan.  They  will  avoLd  minute 
sociological  technicalities.  They  will  attempt  to 
furnish  an  available  introduction  to  sociological 
conceptions  for  graduate  students  in  other 
divisions  of  social  science  who  know  sociology 
only  as  it  is  criticized  or  ignored  in  their  chosen 
departments.  Everything  that  I  shall  say  will 
therefore  be  threadbare  for  students  of  sociology. 
Yet,  while  I  shall  try  to  put  what  I  have  to  say 
in  a  shape  that  will  carry  its  meaning  to  the  his- 
torian or  political  scientist  or  economist  or  psy- 
chologist who  may  never  have  taken  sociologists 
seriously,  I  hope  the  very  fact  that  I  have  sharp- 
ened these  particular  stakes,  and  am  using  them 


6  THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

as  landmarks,  will  help  the  sociologists  to  arrange 
their  ideas  in  a  more  controllable  way. 

Not  merely  in  the  present  lecture  on  the 
unity  of  social  science,  but  throughout  the  course 
on  the  more  general  subject,  The  Meaning  of 
Social  Science,  I  shall  virtually  elaborate  the 
thought  which  I  suggested  in  a  paper  entitled: 
'The  Sociological  Stage  in  Social  Science."  It 
was  published  in  the  American  Journal  of  Soci-' 
ology  for  March,  1910. 

To  the  man  who  is  not  a  sociologist,  the  people 
who  call  themselves  by  that  name  seem  to  be 
more  or  less  cheerful  or  cheerless  cranks.  The 
sociologist  is  supposed  to  have  one  or  more  wheels 
in  his  head  that  revolve  in  tracks  totally  outside 
the  realm  of  real  knowledge.  Nobody  quite  under- 
stands how  the  sociologist  smuggled  himself  into 
good  society,  and  very  few  are  ready  to  admit  that 
there  is  good  and  sufficient  reason  for  his  remain- 
ing. But  here  he  is;  and  he  is  almost  as  much 
puzzled  to  give  a  clear  account  of  himself  as 
the  onlooker  is  to  understand  it  when  it  is  given. 

At  all  events,  one  thing  seems  generally  to  be' 
taken  for  granted,  namely,  that  sociology  and' 
sociologists  are  something  outside  of  and  apart' 
from  the  orthodox  and  standard  social  sciences.' 
TheyTre  a  sort  of  alchemy  and  alchemist  quack- 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  7 

ery  and  quack  in  the  field  of  human  physics, 
or  a  species  of  faith-healing  and  faith-healers  in 
the  realm  of  social  physiology.  They  are  not 
angels  that  have  fallen  from  the  scientific  heaven, 
because  they  were  never  in  it. 

All  this  would  be  amusing  if  it  were  not  so 
pitiful.  This  attitude  toward  sociology  is  really  a 
self -indictment  by  everyone  who  maintains  it.  It 
is  a  betrayal  of  amateurishness  and  unsophistica- 
tion  which  would  be  fatal  if  it  were  not  supported 
by  such  a  big  inert  mass  of  like-mindedness.  In 
such  a  numerous  company  it  can  persuade  itself 
that  its  ignorance  is  superior  wisdom. 

I  want  to  liave  it  distinctly  understood  at  the 
outset  that  I  shall  say  not  a  word  in  this  lecture 
that  might  not  be  said  from  their  own  point  of 
view  by  historians,  political  scientists,  economists, 
psychologists,  or  philosophers.  There  is  nothing 
freaky  about  the  things  that  I  shall  say  because 
they  happen  to  be  said  by  a  sociologist.  In  some 
form  or  other  they  are  taken  for  granted,  or  im- 
plied, or  even  spoken  out  somewhat  frequently  by 
social  scientists  of  all  denominations.  One  of  the 
commonplaces  which  I  shall  emphasize  presently 
is  that  the  common  property  of  all  the  social 
sciences  in  these  propositions  upon  which  I  am 
laying  stress  ought  to  sho^y  that  SQcioloja^''  is  not 


8  THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

SO  clearly  an  Ishmael  in  social  science  as  is  rather 
generally  supposed. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  same  thing  has  its 
other  side.  The  incredulous  may  feel  them- 
selves confirmed  in  their  incredulity  by  the  resort 
of  sociologists  to  assertion  of  commonplaces. 
The  inference  is :  unless  sociology  has  something 
more  distinctive  than  that  to  say,  it  has  no  suf- 
ficient reason  for  existence. 

I  shall  return  to  this  claim  more  than  once 
in  this  and  the  following  lectures.  At  present  I 
state  the  general  reply  in  this  form:  the  first — 
not  the  only — ^peculiarity  about  the  fact  that  these 
almost  axiomatic  things  are  said  by  the  soci- 
ologists, and  about  the  ways  in  which  they  are 
said,  is  that  they  are  valued  by  the  sociologists 
as  worthy  of  sustained  attention,  not  merely  of 
rote  utterance.  The  sociologists  hold  that  we 
have  not  dealt  with  them  in  accordance  with 
their  importance  when  we  have  curtly  nodded 
at  them  and  passed  on  without  further  notice. 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  Professor  Carver 
of  Harvard  is  right,  that  "sociology  is  a  science 
of  left-overs."  It  is  the  same  sense,  however,  in 
w^hich  the  operator  of  a  brick  kiln  would  be  right 
if  he  said  that  the  mason's  trade  is  a  knack  of 
handling  left-overs.  From  the  brick  kiln  point 
of  view,  mortar  and  its  manipulation  in  fasten- 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  9 

ing  bricks  together  might  be  called  left-overs. 
Without  these  left-overs,  however,  the  bricks 
would  not  stick  together  long  enough  to  place  the 
rafters  for  the  roof  of  a  one-story  cabin.  The 
left-over  mortar  and  masonry  are  all  that  keep 
the  bricks  themselves  from  being  left-outs. 

Without  exaggeration  or  impertinence,  I 
might  adapt  to  sociology  the  biblical  figure,  "the 
stone  which  the  builders  refused,  the  same  is 
become  the  head  of  the  corner."  That  is,  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  claim  that  the  one  central  thing  for 
which  the  sociological  movement  in  social  science 
is  significant  is  necessary  in  order  to  give  social 
science  as  a  whole  a  thoroughly  first-rate  meaning. 

If  I  claimed  nothing  more  for  sociology,  this 
would  be  enough  to  call  for  a  new  lining-up  of 
all  the  social  sciences,  with  their  attention  fixed 
on  the  neglected-elemerrtrin  their  situation.  They 
all  know  the  thing  that  they  neglect.  The  soci- 
ologists are  undertaking  to  make  them  know 
that  they  may  no  longer  neglect  it.  What- 
ever else  may  be  true  or  false  about  soci- 
ology, its  reason  for  existence  is  something  which 
does  not  shut  it  off  nor  set  it  apart  from  other 
social  sciences.  On  the  contrary,  its  essence  is  an 
assertion  which  must  be  the  center  of  all  sane 
social  science,  namely,  that  knowledge  of  human 
experience  cannot  at  last  he  nianyj~m~lhe^-ep^e 


lO         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

in  which  it  approaches  reality  it  must  be  one 
knowledge. 

It  may  take  a  thousand  or  a  million  words 
to  state  what  we  know  about  a  given  occurrence, 
say  the  San  Francisco  earthquake;  but  after  all 
the  use  of  thousands  or  millions  of  words  to  con- 
vey our  knowledge  does  not  make  the  occurrence 
itself  many.  It  merely  exhibits  the  clumsiness 
of  our  machinery  of  knowledge,  the  contrast 
between  our  symbolism  of  representation  and  the 
objective  occurrence,  the  approximateness  of  our 
intellectual  reproduction  of  objective  processes. 
The  thing  to  be  known  is  one  connected  whole. 
Complete  knowledge  of  that  whole  would  be  a 
single  co-ordinated  achievement  of  the  mind. 
Anything  short  of  that  is  the  mind's  plodding 
along  toward  that  completed  achievement,  or  more 
or  less  distracted  postponement  of  the  achieve- 
ment. 

Sociology  is  really  assuming  the  same  pro- 
phetic role  in  social  science  which  tradition  credits 
to  Moses  in  the  training  of  his  nation,  when  he 
sounded  the  keynote,  "Hear,  O  Israel !  The  Lord 
our  God  is  one  Lord."  Or  the  role  of  the  rally- 
ing cry  of  Islam,  'There  is  but  one  God  and 
Mahomet  is  his  prophet!"  Of  the  role  of  all  uni- 
theists,  against  those  exaggerators  of  aspects  of 
their  conceptions  of  divinity  who  went  so  far  as 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  II 

actually  to  set  up  a  tritheism.  Or  the  role  of 
those  modern  psychologists  who  saved  us  from 
that  mental  philosophy  which  turned  the  human 
mind  into  a  department  store  with  devices  for 
opening  and  closing  impenetrable  partitions 
between  the  divisions  of  intellect,  sensibility,  and 
will.  Sociology  is  like  each  of  these  unifying 
alternatives  in  the  one  particular  that  it  is  pro- 
claiming the  elementary  truth  of  the  unity  of  the 
social  reality,  and  the  consequent  unity  of  all 
the  divisions  of  science  that  may  be  invented  as 
machineries  for  understanding  the  reality.  It 
would  not  be  true  to  say  that  the  sociologists 
from  the  start  have  been  conscious  of  their 
prophetic  office,  or  that  they  have  had  an  un- 
equivocal message,  or  that  they  have  stuck  con- 
sistently to  a  single  text.  Like  nearly  every  other 
group  of  thinkers,  the  sociologists  have  more  or 
less  blindly  felt  their  way  toward  their  real  func- 
tion. It  would  be  unreasonable  to  demand  that 
the  men  who  began  the  process  of  getting  a  more 
adequate  statement  of  the  problems  of  human 
experience  should  have  seen  its  end  from  the 
beginning.  We  may  see  very  plainly  now,  how- 
ever, that  underneath  the  impulses  which  were 
bringing  sociology  into  being  there  were  partial 
premonitions  of  the  truth  which  is  now  central. 
The  progenitors  of  sociology  were  strongly  influ- 


12         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

enced  by  the  feeling,  if  not  by  the  formula,  that 
human  experience  is  somehow  an  interlocking 
affair.  They  at  least  acted  in  the  direction  of  the 
belief  that  attempts  to  know  human  experience 
will  be  relatively  abortive  until  they  resolve  them- 
selves into  an  interlocking  system  of  knowledge 
which  shall  fairly  reflect  the  interlocking  systems 
of  activities  to  be  known. 

By  what  right,  then,  do  we  demand  that  stu- 
dents of  the  social  sciences  shall  rank  themselves 
as  students  of  one  science? 

Simply  by  right  of  the  discovery  that  the 
reality  with  which  we  are  in  contact  when  we 
try  to  analyze  a  phase  of  human  experience  is  a 
reality  which  is  interconnected  with  all  other 
phases  of  human  experience.  Pretension  of 
knowledge  of  the~reality^-must  consequently  be 
ignorant  and  impudent  if  it  is  not  a  kind  of 
knowledge  that  fairly  reflects  the  blendings  of 
the  many  unlike  phases  of  activity  in  the  reality 
itself. 

When  I  had  written  to  this  point,  I  found 
myself  puzzled  about  the  next  step  in  the  discus- 
sion. The  sort  of  illustration  that  is  most  in 
point  is  utterly  trite  to  everyone  who  has  had 
even  a  slight  acquaintance  with  sociological  litera- 
ture.    On  that  account  I  hesitate  to  repeat  any- 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  13 

thing  so  familiar.  At  the  same  time  these 
necessary  and  obvious  illustrations  do  not  readily 
reveal  their  meaning,  or  at  least  their  impor- 
tance, to  anyone  whose  vision  has  not  long  been 
adjusted  to  the  sociological  point  of  view.  I 
fear  the  brief  use  of  the  material  which  the  time 
allows  will  not  amount  to  much,  but  I  will  do 
my  best  to  indicate  the  essence  of  the  situation. 

Whatever  our  place  of  observation  in  the 
social  sciences,  historical  perspective  is  a  part  of 
the  birthright  of  our  generation.  All  of  us  not 
merely  admit,  but  we  insist,  that  conditions  are 
what  they  are,  and  events  occur  as  they  do, 
because  a  long  chain  of  antecedent  conditions 
and  occurrences  have  set  the  stage  and  furnish 
the  motives.  All  of  us  look  upon  anything  that 
arrests  our  attention  as  a  historical  effect  of  his- 
toricaLcauses. 

Now  let  us  see  what  this  involves  for  our 
fundamental  conceptions  of  social  science.  I  will 
take  for  illustration  the  case  with  which  I  am 
most  familiar. 

I  distinctly  remember  when  the  whole  civi- 
lized world — whatever  the  particular  interests  and 
sympathies  that  might  have  wished  otherwise — 
felt  an  undercurrent  of  pity  for  those  misguided 
boors  on  the  other  side  of  the  Rhine,  those  quar- 
relsome, beer-guzzling  barbarians,  who  wxre  being 


14         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

led  by  that  swashbuckling  Bismarck  to  certain 
annihilation  by  the  refined,  scientific,  skilful,  and 
altogether  superior  French.  It  was  a  case  of 
matter  against  mind,  of  brawn  against  brain,  of 
petty  inexperienced  provincialism  against  a  cos- 
mopolitan imperial  solidarity.  The  outcome 
could  not  be  in  doubt. 

How  do  we  now  explain  the  miscalculation 
of  the  civilized  world  ?  Of  course,  I  am  referring 
to  the  general  popular  impressions,  not  to  the 
contrary  judgment  of  a  better  informed  few. 
Why,  we  say  the  world  did  not  know  the  real 
history  of  the  two  countries. 

Very  well;  so  far  so  good.  But  what  is  the 
real  history  of  the  two  countries  ?  Is  it  the  things 
set  down  in  the  books  written  by  men  called  his- 
torians, and  that  are  on  the  shelves  labeled  history 
in  our  libraries?  If  so,  then  I  assert  not  merely 
that  the  histories  in  existence  in  1870  did  not 
furnish  a  sufficient  basis  for  a  different  judg- 
ment, but  that  those  written  since  have  not  fully 
satisfied  the  requirements. 

What  is  the  history  of  a  country?  To  avoid 
confusion,  and  to  distinguish  between  history  in 
the  sense  of  the  literary  reflex  of  what  has 
objectively  occurred  and  history  in  the  sense  of 
the  objective  occurrences  themselves,  I  will  use 
the  term  experience  as  a  synonym  for  the  latter 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  15 

meaning.  I  will  refer  to  Germany  alone  in  the 
rest  of  the  illustration. 

The  experience  through  which  the  Germans 
ceased  to  be  what  they  were  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  became  what  they  were  in  this 
decade  of  "Dreadnaughts,"  the  experience  which 
had  not  advertised  itself  very  generally  to  the 
world  in  1870,  consisted  very  largely  of  occur- 
rences which  either  are  not  mentioned  at  all  in 
the  histories  in  the  current  sense,  or  if  they  are 
mentioned  are  not  so  connected  up  with  the 
total  process  of  the  experience  that  their  signifi- 
cance as  functioning  factors  gets  its  necessary 
explanation  and  appraisal. 

It  is  superfluous  for  me  to  confess  that  it 
w^ould  not  be  within  my  power  to  write  a  history 
of  Germany.  I  have  not  even  attempted  ta 
write  a  complete  account  of  the  one  thin  strand 
of  German  experience  which  I  am  studying  for 
a  special  purpose.  In  tracing  this  one  strand, 
however,  I  have  come  upon  evidence  which  I 
had  no  thought  of  looking  for,  tending  to  con- 
firm my  main  thesis  about  the  oneness  of  the 
social  sciences.  If  I  had  attempted  to  find  more 
factors  which  entered  into  the  experience,  the 
list  might  doubtless  be  considerably  enlarged, 
without  resort  to  minute  subdivision  of  the  fac- 
tors.     Naming   merely   the   effective   influences 


l6         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

Upon  the  Germans  which  I  encountered  while 
studying  a  single  line  of  evolution  in  German 
theories  of  social  science,  I  am  able  to  present 
a  schematic  picture  of  the  experience  through 
which  the  Germans  of  1510  became  the  Germans 
of  1 910.  I  have  scheduled  the  objective  circum- 
stances or  occurrences  in  a  column  with  odd  num- 
bers, while  the  parallel  column  with  even  numbers 
contains  titles  of  corresponding  subjective  factors. 
(See  table.)  The  order  in  which  the  factors  are 
listed  is  not  intended  to  represent  a  hypothesis 
about  their  relative  importance. 

To  bring  out  the  full  meaning  of  this  schedule, 
it  should  be  changed  into  a  diagram.  From  the 
title  representing  the  original  persons,  lines  should 
be  drawn  representing  afferent  and  efferent  chan- 
nels reciprocally  connecting  those  persons  with 
each  of  the  twenty-five  factors  in  the  list.  Simi- 
lar reciprocating  currents  should  be  represented 
between  each  of  the  twenty-five  factors  and  every 
other.  All  of  these  currents  should  be  repre- 
sented as  converging  in  the  lower  title  standing 
for  the  persons  who  are  the  temporary  resultant 
of  the  experience. 

We  must  remember  that  each  of  these  factors 
numbered  up  to  twenty- four  has  had  a  continuity 
so  unique  that  relays  of  persons  might  spend  their 
lives  upon  either  of  them,  and  might  find  that  the 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 


17 


THE  GERMANS  OF  1510 


I.  Their  physical  make-up. 

3.  Their   physical    environ- 
ment. 
5.  Their  social  antecedents. 
7.  Their    political    institu- 
tions. 
9.  Their     established    pri- 
vate law. 
II.  Their    fund    of    knowl- 
edge. 
13.  Their    ecclesiastical    in- 
stitutions. 
15.  Their  economic  institu- 
tions. 
17.  Their  mores. 

19.  Their  aesthetic  self- 
expressions,  including 
literature. 

21.  Their  educational  insti- 
tutions. 

23.  Their  contacts  with 
other  civilizations. 


2.  Their       standards       of 

physical  welfare. 
4.  Their       technique       of 

physical  exploitation. 
6.  Their  folklore. 
8.  Their  political  theories. 

10.  Their  theories  of  pri- 
vate rights. 

12.  Their  scientific  metho- 
dologies. 

14.  Their  theologies. 

16.  Their  theories  of  in- 
dustry. 

18.  Their  general  philoso- 
phy. 

20.  Their  theories  of  art. 


22.  Their  theories  of  educa- 
tion. 

24.  Their  theories  of  inter- 
national relations. 


25.  Incessant  mutations  of  these  factors, 
as  they  combined  in  the  personality 
of  individuals  or  groups  representing 
countless  combinations  of  interests. 


THE  GERMANS  OF  1910 


\ 


l8         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

task  of  tracing  the  process  of  succession  in  each 
case  was  at  last  hopeless.  We  must  remember 
too  that  the  innumerable  situations  in  the  group 
indicated  by  the  number  twenty-five  all  need 
explanation  by  the  help  of  the  twenty- four  fac- 
tors, and  each  situation  in  the  innumerable  group 
twenty-five  might  contain  evidences  that  would 
modify  previous  impressions  about  the  order  of 
experience  in  one  or  all  of  the  twenty-four  fac- 
tors. We  must  remember  further  that  this  list 
of  twenty- four  factors  is  not  the  result  of  a 
thorough  analysis  of  the  experience  as  a  whole. 
It  is  merely  the  result  of  examining  a  very 
obscure  current  in  the  experience,  and  it  testifies 
only  to  the  influences  which  were  found  at  work 
in  that  area. 

What  does  the  illustration  bear  on  its  face? 

To  answer  the  question  I  assume  agreement 
\  about  the  major  premise  that  the  main  function 
\  of  the  social  sciences  is  to  make  out  the  meaning 
of  human  experience. 

I  know  that  there  are  all  sorts  of  side-steppings 
to  avoid  this  exacting  principle.  It  condemns 
great  masses  of  frivolity  that  thrive  unrebuked 
under  the  name  of  one  or  other  of  the  social 
sciences.  I  have  even  heard  an  eminent  American 
historian  make  an  assertion  in  public  which  I 
should  be  glad  to  be  convinced  that  I  had  mis- 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  19 

understood.  He  did  not  sufficiently  explain  him- 
self to  remove  the  impression  that  he  had  said, 
"History  need  not  even  be  true,  if  it  is  only  artis- 
tic." Other  social  scientists  actually  turn  social 
science  into  a  lobbyist  for  special  interests.  Even 
these  usually  have  a  way  of  convincing  them- 
selves that  service  of  their  special  interest  is 
the  genuine  way  of  making  science  the  inter- 
preter of  life. 

Assuming  the  major  premise,  then,  that  the 
main  function  of  the  social  sciences  is  to  make 
out  the  meaning  of  human  experience — and  even 
in  the  case  of  men  who  pervert  the  principle  to 
thoroughly  selfish  uses,  it  has  some  value  in  ad 
hominem  argument — what  does  our  illustration 
bear  on  its  face?  What  does  it  show  us  that 
the  experience  was,  through  which  the  Germany 
composed  of  several  hundred  camps  of  as  many 
Wallensteins,  eating  the  food  of  herds  of  bovine 
peasants,  while  they  spent  their  time  fighting 
each  other  for  ownership  of  the  peasants  that 
produced  the  food — what  was  the  experience 
through  which  this  Germany  became  the  Ger- 
many of  our  day,  in  some  respects  the  most  inti- 
mately interwoven  co-operative  commonwealth 
the  world  has  ever  seen?  What  was  this  ex- 
perience ? 

Well,  on  the  face  of  the  returns  it  was  the 


20         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

interplay  of  at  least  twenty- four  principal  factors, 
each  single  one  so  complicated  in  its  sources,  its 
evolution,  its  reactions  under  shifting  conditions, 
that  knowledge  of  one  of  these  factors  alone  is 
likely  to  be  at  best  very  largely  hypothetical,  con- 
jectural, speculative,  or  at  any  rate  fragmentary. 
Highly  trained  and  experienced  skill  is  needed 
to  guard  against  the  most  glaring  errors  in  ex- 
plaining the  part  that  either  of  these  factors 
plays  at  a  given  time — not  to  say  from  the  begin- 
ning to  the  end — in  its  reactions  with  all  the 
other  factors. 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  part  that  one  of  these 
factors  plays  at  a  given  moment  is  a  function  of 
the  operation  of  all  the  other  factors  at  the 
same  time. 

If  then  it  is  so  hard  to  get  an  all-sided  knowl- 
edge of  one  of  these  factors  alone,  where  shall 
the  knowledge  come  from  that  will  credibly  put 
all  the  other  factors  in  their  working  relations 
with  a  single  one  which  a  specialist  may  approxi- 
mately understand  as  an  abstraction?  Must  it 
not  come  from  an  intelligent  division  of  labor 
upon  each  of  these  factors — treated  in  full  view 
of  the  perception  that  it  is  a  factor,  not  a  sepa- 
rate existence;  and  must  not  all  these  fragments 
of  knowledge  be  assembled  and  fitted  together — 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  21 

somewhat  as  in  the  case  of  the  parts  of  a  puzzle 
picture  ? 

The  last  analogy  might  perhaps  be  carried 
out  at  considerable  length.  That  is,  we  may  have 
a  piece  of  knowledge  about  either  of  these  factors. 
It  may  interest  us  very  much.  We  may  have  a 
very  high  idea  of  its  importance.  So  long  as  we 
hold  it  apart  by  itself  there  is  very  little  to  chal- 
lenge our  estimate.  But  the  moment  we  begin  to 
fit  it  into  the  knowledge  that  other  men  have 
gained  of  these  other  factors,  we  are  likely  to 
find  that  our  solitary  estimate  is  very  far  from 
the  truth.  The  item  which  we  have  rated  as  a 
first-rate  factor  may  shrink  to  the  dimensions  of 
a  twenty- fourth  rate  factor;  on  the  other  hand, 
the  exact  reverse  might  occur. 

In  a  word,  therefore,  the  illustration  carries 
on  its  face  the  implication  that  there  must  be 
team-work  between  the  social  sciences,  if  they  are 
to  advance  from  the  rank  of  boys'  play  and  con- 
stitute serious  social  science. 

A  passage  of  human  experience,  like  the  one 
I  have  taken  as  an  illustration,  is  as  real  as  a 
chemical  reaction.  It  is  millions  of  times  more 
complex  than  a  chemical  reaction.  The  task  of 
the  social  sciences  is  primarily  to  find  out  just 
what  occurred,  and  secondarily  to  find  out  the  pro- 
cess of  the  occurrence,  and  the  meaning  and  the 


22         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

value  of  the  occurrence;  just  as  it  is  the  task  of 
chemistry  to  find  out  what  occurs,  and  the  pro- 
cess of  the  occurrence,  and  the  meaning  and 
value  of  the  occurrence,  when  some  iron  filings 
and  some  hydrochloric  acid  are  together  in  a 
test-tube. 

It  is  the  task  of  the  chemist  to  find  in  the 
reaction  in  the  test-tube  a  fraction  of  universal 
truth.  In  a  parallel  sense,  when  we  confront  a 
passage  of  experience  such  as  we  have  taken  for 
illustration,  our  task  is  to  discover  what  occurred 
in  that  experience  zvhich  has  a  significance  for 
all  human  experience  everywhere. 

Since  the  occurrences  contained  in  a  given 
experience  are  a  composite  of  all  the  separate 
factors  that  co-operated,  we  degrade  social  sci- 
ence into  a  vaudeville  program  if  we  act  as  though 
we  could  work  out  historical  stunts  independent 
of  economic  stunts,  psychological  stunts  detached 
from  political  stunts,  etc.  The  human  experience 
to  be  interpreted  is  a  unity.  The  sciences  that 
undertake  the  interpretation  _  must  begin  by  con- 
stituting themselves  a  unity. 

I  have  already  indicated  the  sort  of  unity  I 
mean,  namely,  not  a  unity  of  duplication,  but  a 
unity  of  team-work. 

I  would  not  too  directly  anticipate  the  phase 
of  the  subject  that  I  shall  talk  about  in  the  next 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  23 

lecture,  viz. :  "The  Disunity  of  the  Social  Sci- 
ences." The  general  thesis  will  be  that,  strictly- 
speaking,  we  have  no  social  science  yet  which 
deserves  much  respect.  We  have  developed 
merely  a  number  of  techniques,  historiography, 
statistics,  psychological  analyses,  etc.  We  have 
not  done  very  much,  measured  by  the  complexi- 
ties of  the  experience  to  be  interpreted,  in  the 
way  of  organizing  these  techniques  into  an  appa- 
ratus of  discovery  adequate  to  the  tasks. 

To  illustrate  what  a  real  process  of  discovery 
would  involve,  I  will  suppose  that  the  members 
of  the  social  science  group  in  our  own  university, 
for  example,  decided  to  investigate  the  meaning 
of  the  process  by  which  the  old  Germano-Roman 
imperialism  first  resolved  itself  into  the  four- 
hundred-fold  particularism  of  Germany  beginning 
with  the  Reformation,  and  the  further  process  by 
which,  after  the  breakdown  of  particularism  in 
the  Napoleonic  era,  decadent  particularism  trans- 
formed itself  into  the  new  imperialism  of  the 
modern  empire.  If  our  academic  group  were 
intelligently  class-conscious,  as  the  socialists  would 
say,  we  should  forget  the  departmental  partitions 
that  turn  academic  halls  into  dolls'  houses. 
Twenty- four  or  more  of  the  philosophers,  and 
psychologists,  and  cultural  and  political  and 
church  historians,  and  lawyers,  economists,  soci- 


24        THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

ologists,  etc.,  would  become  responsible  for  run- 
ning down  the  evidence,  each  for  one  of  these 
twenty- four  strands  woven  into  the  web  of  the 
experience,  and  each  would  try  to  learn  from 
the  others  how  his  particular  strand  was  woven 
with  the  other  strands  so  as  to  make  up  the 
complete  experience. 

We  have  to  assume,  of  course,  for  the  sake 
of  the  illustration,  that  the  material  necessary 
for  carrying  out  such  an  enterprise  would  be 
accessible.  The  remainder  of  the  instructors  in 
the  group  might  still  devote  themselves  to  instruc- 
tion of  beginners  in  the  use  of  the  different 
scientific  techniques,  and  to  the  selection  of  prom- 
ising candidates  for  more  advanced  training  as 
investigators. 

The  group  of  twenty-four  or  more  men 
enlisted  in  this  co-operative  investigation  would 
keep  constantly  in  touch  with  one  another,  in 
order  to  trace  each  his  strand  better  by  making 
sure  at  every  moment  that  its  connections  with 
the  other  strands  were  not  mistaken. 

After  five  years  or  ten,  the  results  would 
not  be  either  of  the  academically  disjointed  sci- 
ences represented  by  individuals  in  the  co-operat- 
ing group.  The  synthesized  result  would  he  an 
organic  body  of  social  science;  a  knowledge  of 
a  section  of  the  experience  of  men  in  association. 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  25 

I  will  sum  up  what  I  have  said,  with  a  dif- 
ferent order  of  statement  and  with  slight  varia- 
tions of  form. 

In  the  first  place,  human  experience  is  a 
connected  whole.  If  we  divide  it  into  unrelated 
parts,  between  which  we  recognize  no  effective 
interdependence,  we  do  violence  to  it  just  as  we 
should  if  we  arbitrarily  dismembered  objects  of 
nature  and  constructed  "sciences"  of  their  scat- 
tered parts.  Suppose  we  assumed  that  trees  are 
not  trees.  Suppose  we  imagined  that  instead  of 
trees,  as  trees,  there  is  one  independent  exist- 
ence under  ground,  another  from  the  surface  of 
the  soil  to  the  first  branches,  another  from  the 
first  branches  to  the  topmost  and  outmost  twigs. 
Suppose  we  proceeded  to  construct  "sciences"  of 
tree  roots,  and  tree  trunks,  and  tree  branches  in 
turn.    The  result  would  be  three  abortions. 

Just  as  we  must  organize  our  science  of  trees 
in  another  way;  just  as  we  must  try  to  learn 
about  trees  as  wholes;  just  as  we  must  learn 
not  merely  the  wholeness  of  individual  trees,  but 
the  relationship  of  trees  to  the  whole  plant  world, 
and  the  relationship  of  the  whole  plant  world 
to  the  whole  inorganic  world,  or  else  we  deceive 
ourselves  with  the  idea  that  we  have  a  respect- 
able science  of  trees — so  it  is  with  social  science. 

In  the  second  place,  I  might  have  put  the 


26         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

argument  in  this  form:  Since  human  experience 
is  a  connected  whole,  just  as  the  different  func- 
tions of  plant  life  and  the  different  dependen- 
cies of  those  functions  upon  the  conditions  of 
surrounding  inorganic  life  are  a  connected  whole, 
so  valid  and  responsible  science  of  human  expe- 
rience, like  valid  and  responsible  science  of  plant 
life,  must  be  constructed  by  finding  the  actual 
working  relations  in  this  connected  whole  of 
human  experience,  and  getting  them  charted  in 
these  vital  connections.  Valid  social  science  can- 
not be  a  go-as-you-please  race  to  seize  something 
interesting  in  past  or  present  human  experience, 
and  get  that  named  as  a  winner  in  the  speed 
trials.  Valid  social  science  cannot  consist  of 
catch-as-catch-can  wrestling  bouts  with  problems 
of  human  relations,  as  they  happen  to  be  pre- 
sented by  conventionality  or  intellectual  fashion, 
or  by  the  opportunism  of  a  passing  stage  of  civi- 
lization. Social  science  will  be  merely  myth- 
ology sicklied  o'er  with  a  rouge  of  realism, 
until  it  truly  reflects  the  actual  web  of  processes 
in  human  experience — ^just  as  there  was  no  astron- 
omy, till  the  Indian  and  Greek  and  Norse  and 
other  mythologies  ceased  to  substitute  fantasies 
in  men's  minds  for  actual  computation  of  the 
movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies. 

In  the  third  place,  I  have  taken  as  an  illustra- 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  27 

tion  a  sample  portion  of  human  experience — the 
development  of  the  Germans  from  1510  to  1910 
— and  I  had  in  mind  particularly  the  brief  period 
from  the  culmination  of  Frederick  the  Greaf s 
''benevolent  despotism"  to  the  beginnings  of  the 
struggles  for  constitutionalism  after  the  battle  of 
Waterloo.  I  said  that  without  going  very  deep 
into  the  record  I  had  found  twenty- four  factors 
at  work  in  the  experience  of  the  Germans  at 
that  time.  From  my  contacts  with  these  fac- 
tors I  conclude  that  each  of  them  would  fur- 
nish problems  enough — genetic  or  analytic — to 
exhaust  the  resources  of  one  species  of  in- 
vestigators. I  have  insisted  that  a  respectably 
scientific  report  of  this  German  development,  as  a 
typical  treatment  of  all  similar  passages  in  human 
experience,  would  have  to  furnish  an  explana- 
tion of  the  part  played  by  each  of  these  twenty- 
four  factors  in  terms  of  all  the  other  factors 
with  which  each  was  in  co-operation.  I  might 
have  added,  instead  of  merely  hinting,  that  the 
pretentious  histories  which  have  been  written 
about  portions  or  all  of  this  experience  would 
not  pass  a  very  brilliant  examination  if  tested 
by  this  standard.  If  we  should  make  the  requi- 
sitions upon  them  which  mere  speaking  acquaint- 
ance with  these  leading  factors  would  enforce, 
we  should  find  that,  considered  as  conclusive  sci- 


28         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

ence,  in  the  sense  in  which  physical  scientists 
understand  the  term,  there  is  not  such  a  tremen- 
dous amount  to  say  for  these  dignified  histories, 
in  distinction  from  Carlyle's  Frederick  the  Great, 
or  Louisa  Miihlbach's  novels. 

I  might  add  that,  if  there  were  time,  or  if 
it  were  necessary,  to  support  the  generalization 
which  I  merely  illustrate  by  this  one  case,  I 
should  go  to  the  historians  themselves,  I  should 
not  ask  you  to  take  the  word  of  a  sociologist. 
I  should  not  profess  to  be  better  able  to  judge 
what  belongs  to  conclusive  history  than  the 
historians  themselves  have  long  ago  discovered. 
If  you  want  to  get  an  idea  of  what  is  stirring 
in  the  minds  of  historians  today,  which  makes 
the  sociologists  say,  "I  told  you  so,"  which  makes 
the  sociologists  say,  "Haven't  we  predicted  all 
along  that  sooner  or  later  they  will  have  to 
bring  into  the  reckoning  factors  which  they  have 
treated  as  too  petty  to  be  bothered  about?" — 
if  you  should  want  exhibits  of  these  changed! 
or  changing  attitudes  among  the  historians  them- 
selves, read  the  address  of  Professor  Robinson 
last  year  to  the  faculty  and  students  of  Colum- 
bia University,  on  the  position  of  history  in  social 
science;  read  the  presidential  address  of  Professor 
Adams  of  Yale  University  at  the  1908  meeting 
of  the  American   Historical  Association;   read 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  29 

the  plans  of  Lamprecht's  historical  institute  at 
Leipzig;  look  up  Kurt  Breysig's  explanations  of 
the  methods  he  is  introducing  in  his  historical 
seminar  at  Berlin;  or  see  it  all  summed  up  in 
Bernheim's  latest  rendering  of  the  scope  of  his- 
tory. Here  it  is :  Historical  science  is  the  science 
zvhich  investigates  and  exhibits  the  temporally 
and  spatially  bounded  facts  of  the  evolution  of 
men  in  their  singular  as  well  as  in  their  collective 
activities  as  social  beings,  in  the  correlation  of 
psychophysical  causation} 

There  you  have  it.  The  fact  that  Bernheim 
claims  the  whole  for  historical  science  does  not 
feaze  me  in  the  least.  What  it  will  be  called 
when  we  get  it  is  the  slightest  of  my  troubles. 
The  main  point  is  that  this  most  prominent  his- 
torical methodologist  in  the  world  sees  the  task 
of  all  social  science  as  historical  science,  but  he 
sees  it  just  as  I  am  urging  that  every  sane  mind 
must  see  it,  when  we  really  get  sane,  as  a  unity 
of  psychophysical  interconnections. 

Call  it  history  or  what  you  will,  the  gist  of 
ir  is  that  it  is  unity^  and  our  lucubrations  about 
the  meaning  of  life  are  only  more  or  less  respect- 
able philanderings  until  they  are  organized  into 
a  scientific  unity  which  veraciously  reflects  the 
objective  unity. 

^Bernheim,  Historische  Methode   (ed.  of  1908),  9. 


so        THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

Once  more  I  have  put  emphasis  on  the  fact — 
which  the  last  point  has  also  illustrated — that 
although  I  am  speaking  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  sociologists,  I  am  not  professing  to  say  things 
which  are  peculiar  to  the  sociologists,  or  known 
only  by  the  sociologists.  The  precise  contrary  is 
the  case,  so  far  as  I  have  gone.  I  shall  say 
things  later  which  men  in  other  parts  of  social 
science  deny.  All  that  I  have  said,  and  all  that 
I  shall  say  in  the  second  lecture,  has  been  said 
over  and  over  again  by  men  who  spoke  from 
the  standpoint  of  each  of  the  other  departments 
of  social  science.  The  chief  difference  between 
them  and  me  is  that  they  think  these  things  are 
so  true  that  they  will  take  care  of  themselves, 
even  if  everybody  neglects  them,  while  I  think 
they  are  so  true  that  they  deserve  to  be  lined 
out  to  all  students  of  social  science  till  they  are 
in  as  common  use  as  the  alphabet. 

Finally,  to  avoid  possible  misapprehension  of 
my  argument,  I  must  restate  the  conclusion  which 
I  draw  from  the  necessary  unity  of  social  sci- 
ence. I  am  by  no  means  contending  that  soci- 
ology is  identical  with  that  unified  social  science. 
All  I  assert  is  that  the  sociologists  have  some- 
thing to  say  which  is  bound  to  be  one  of  the 
factors  in  organizing  that  unified  social  science. 
I  do  not  know,  and  I  do  not  much  care,  whether 


UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE  31 

anything  or  anybody  will  answer  to  the  name 
sociology  or  sociologist  a  hundred  years  from 
now.  For  all  I  know,  the  same  sort  of  change 
may  take  place  which  relieved  the  term  "rhetoric" 
of  most  of  the  meaning  that  it  once  had.  The 
term  ''rhetoric"  once  covered  all  that  was  known 
or  supposed  to  be  knowable  about  human  rela- 
tions. A  like  change  may  send  all  our  present 
labels  in  the  social  sciences  to  the  glossaries  of 
archaic  terms.  This  matter  of  names  is  too  triv- 
ial for  grown  men.  I  am  not  even  concerned 
to  claim  that  sociology  will  have  a  separate  desig- 
nation or  a  separate  existence  a  hundred  years 
from  now.  It  may  be  wholly  absorbed  and  dis- 
tributed among  the  different  parts  of  the  science 
which  by .  that  time  may  be  unified  around  the 
discovered  center  of  gravity  of  human  experi- 
ence. However  that  may  be,  this  is  the  gist 
of  the  whole  matter :  So  long  as  you  are  likely  to 
live  you  will  he  blind  leaders  of  the  blind  in 
social  science  unless  you  have  learned  to  give  a 
fair  hearing  to  the  things  which  the  psycholo- 
gists and  the  sociologists  are  bringing  out  into 
prominence. 


LECTURE  II 

THE  DISUNITY  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

The  stake  that  I  have  to  drive  down  now 
is  this : 

Between  the  so-called  social  sciences  today 
there  is  no  team-work  worthy  of  the  name  of 
science. 

Now,  do  not  understand  me  to  claim  that 
sociologists  are  less  guilty  than  other  people  of 
the  faults  that  lie  behind  this  condition.  We  are 
all  human  together,  and  if  the  actual  transgres- 
sions which  may  be  charged  up  to  the  sociolo- 
gists under  this  head  are  fewer  in  number  than 
those  of  the  other  sciences,  it  is  because  the  soci- 
ologists are  fewer  and  have  been  a  shorter  time 
in  the  world.  Even  at  that,  I  can  assemble  from 
my  own  personal  knowledge  enough  cases  among 
the  sociologists  of  failure  to  co-operate  w^ith  one 
another  to  offset  anything  of  a  similar  sort  which 
I  might  illustrate  from  other  branches  of  social 
science.  Living  in  a  glass  house,  therefore,  I 
am  shy  of  throwing  stones.  Besides,  I  am  not 
engaged  in  a  holier-than-thou  propaganda.  I  am 
pointing  out  a  w^orldwide  trait  of  our  pre-scien- 
tific  period.     In  our  social  sciences  the  world 

32 


DISUNITY  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES       S3 

over,  we  have  all  the  pretensions  of  science  but 
only  the  beggarly  elements  of  its  processes. 

When  I  have  said  things  like  this  where  they 
led  to  a  friendly  fight  with  men  of  other  stand- 
points, they  have  always  come  back  at  me  with 
some  variation  of  the  reply,  "Oh,  you  are  behind 
the  times!  You  are  thinking  of  five  or  ten  years 
ago!  We  have  changed  all  that!  You  simply 
have  not  kept  up  with  the  procession!  You  are 
talking  about  men  of  straw!  Wake  up  and  see 
things  as  they  are!" 

Well,  let  us  look  at  things  as  they  are,  but 
do  not  make  the  mistake  of  charging  me  with 
saying  that  we  are  not  making  progress  all  along 
the  line  in  the  social  sciences.  While  I  could 
not  speak  as  an  expert,  of  course,  I  have  enough 
layman's  knowledge  of  what  is  going  on  in  a 
score  of  major  and  minor  social  sciences  so  that 
I  would  not  ask  an  easier  task  than  that  of 
showing  that  splendid  progress  has  been  achieved 
in  the  last  decade  in  every  one  of  them.  By 
comparison  with  past  attainments  I  can  eulogize 
each  of  the  social  sciences  as  enthusiastically  as 
anybody.  I  am  comparing  what  we  are  now 
doing  in  the  social  sciences  with  the  sort  of  cam- 
paigning which  our  present  insight  into  human 
relations  makes  it  our  duty  to  plan.  I  am  saying 
that  in  spite  of  all  we  have  accomplished,  we  are 


34        THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

doing  comparatively  nothing  in  the  way  of  con- 
centrated team-work  between  the  social  sciences 
in  organized  investigation. 

No !  Whether  progress  has  been  made  in  the 
special  divisions  of  social  science  is  not  the  point. 
Whether  progress  costs  poverty  in  the  industrial 
world  or  not,  there  is  progress  in  certain  aspects 
of  science  which  amounts  temporarily  to  increas- 
ing poverty  of  spirit.  One  of  the  initial  conse- 
quences of  the  division  of  labor  in  the  sciences 
is  precisely  parallel,  in  its  effect  on  the  laborer, 
with  the  consequences  of  the  division  of  labor  in 
manufacture,  which  economists  have  observed 
almost  ever  since  there  has  been  division  of  labor. 
In  the  scientific  case,  the  consequences  are  in 
one  respect  relatively  worse.  In  science,  we  can 
have  no  manager  to  correlate  the  work  of  the 
specialists.  The  consequence  is,  therefore,  nar- 
rowing both  for  the  w^orker  and  for  his  output. 
Specialization  in  the  sciences  means  a  subsequent 
pre-scientific  period  of  provincialized  science.  It 
is  that  stage  through  which  the  social  sciences  are 
passing  today. 

We  need  not  go  back  into  ancient  history 
to  show  this.  I  leave  all  that  sort  of  evidence 
out  of  the  account  entirely  at  present,  and  I  ask 
you  to  look  at  the  case  from  an  entirely  different 
angle. 


DISUNITY  OFTHE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES      35 


After  I  had  been  trying  to  teach  history  and 
economics  for  seven  years  in  a  country  college,  I 
spent  my  first  Sabbatical  year  at  Johns  Hopkins 
University.  The  organization  of  graduate  work 
there  at  that  time  arranged  all  the  students  in  the 
social  sciences  in  one  group  of  courses.  Some 
of  the  courses  were  two  hours,  others  three  hours 
a  week.  All  but  a  few  were  given  in  a  dingy  old 
garret  called  the  seminar  room.  There  was  a 
long  table  at  which  perhaps  thirty  of  us  had  our 
appointed  places,  and  from  nine  until  twelve,  five 
mornings  in  the  week,  all  of  this  thirty  heard  the 
same  lectures  and  took  part  in  the  same  discus- 
sion. First  a  historian  would  have  us,  then  an 
economist,  then  a  political  scientist,  or  a  soci- 
ologist, or  a  lawyer.  When  a  specialist  in  either 
of  these  fields,  or  in  some  division  of  practical 
social  affairs,  came  from  Washington,  or  Philadel- 
phia, or  New  York,  to  talk  to  the  seminar,  faculty 
and  students  pooled  their  critical  equipments, 
and  in  the  interest  of  an  all-around  view  of  the 
subject  attempted  to  test  every  man's  theory  from 
all  the  standpoints  represented  in  the  group.  Pro- 
fessor Bloomfield  came  from  the  philological  side 
to  represent  ethnology,  and  he  did  it  in  a  way 
to  put  everybody  on  his  guard  about  historical 
conclusions  that  did  not  reckon  fully  with  the 
racial  factor.     Professor  Gilder  sleeve,  from  the 


S6         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

Greek  department,  was  a  vigilant  censor  over  any 
prematurities  about  ancient  history.  The  one 
conspicuous  lack  was  the  absence  of  a  masterful 
psychologist.  Professor  G.  Stanley  Hall  had  just 
gone  to  Clark,  and  his  place  had  not  been  filled. 

The  beauty  of  the  situation  was  that  men  who 
looked  at  human  experience  from  a  dozen  differ- 
ent angles,  and  had  as  many  distinct  theories  of 
the  combination  of  methods  by  which  the  inter- 
pretation of  human  experience  should  be  under- 
taken, each  had  a  chance  at  us.  We  were  a  sort 
of  jury  in  an  academic  equity  case.  We  had  to 
make  up  our  minds  about  the  ratio  of  value  in 
the  different  claims,  as  presented  to  us  by  the 
claimants  themselves — not  by  prejudiced  third 
parties. 

Now  I  should  like  to  know  what  you  think 
of  the  comparative  chances  of  getting  an  all- 
sided  view  of  the  unity  and  comprehensiveness 
of  social  science  in  an  environment  on  that  model, 
as  contrasted  with  the  system  of  pretty  nearly 
water-tight  compartments  into  which  every  other 
American  university,  so  far  as  I  can  learn,  has 
been  tending  to  divide  the  social  sciences. 

For  various  reasons,  the  picture  that  I  have 
drawn  of  Johns  Hopkins  University  twenty  years 
ago  would  be  less  accurate  as  a  description  of  the 
larger  part  of  the  intervening  period. 


DISUNITY  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES      37 

Assuming  men  of  equal  abilities,  would  you 
go  for  the  most  intelligent  introduction  to  social 
science  to  a  group  of  scholars  that  divided  itself 
up  into  a  series  of  non-communicating  subgroups, 
in  which  a  breeding-in-and-in  process  was  culti- 
vated, where  each  subgroup  practiced  its  own 
critical  technique  from  its  particularistic  view- 
point, with  precautions  against  contagion  from 
groups  occupying  a  different  ground?  Would 
you  expect,  under  these  latter  circumstances,  to 
get  a  balanced  conception  of  the  most  compli- 
cated relations  that  our  minds  encounter;  or 
would  you  choose  to  go  to  a  group  where  there 
was  a  continual  comparison  of  one  viewpoint 
with  another,  and  the  constant  co-operation  of 
conflict  to  decide  in  a  free  forum  how  much  of 
this  view,  and  how  much  of  that,  and  how  much 
of  the  other  could  maintain  itself  as  a  legiti- 
mate way  of  entrance  into  the  unity  of  the  com- 
mon subject-matter? 

To  ask  the  question  is  to  answer  it.  There 
can  be  no  serious  difference  of  opinion  among 
intelligent  men  about  the  two  alternatives.  In 
the  resolute  clash  of  all  possible  views,  there  is 
infinitely  more  prospect  of  establishing  a  perspec- 
tive fairly  representing  reality,  than  in  taking 
refuge  in  one  or  two  protected  conning  towers. 


38         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

each  with  an  aperture  opening  only  in  one 
direction. 

But  the  comment  is  made :  "The  sort  of  thing 
described  at  Johns  Hopkins  University  is  more 
fit  for  undergraduates  than  for  graduates.  Such 
a  program  is  necessarily  superficial.  What  it 
gains  in  extension  it  lose*s  in  intention.  Speciali- 
zation cannot  amount  to  anything  if  carried  on 
in  that  way." 

I  freely  admit  that  there  is  force  in  the  objec- 
tion, though  I  cannot  believe  it  is  conclusive. 
I  freely  admit,  too,  that  there  are  other  objec- 
tions to  the  Johns  Hopkins  plan,  one  of  which 
is  that  it  was  unable  fully  to  retain  its  dis- 
tinctive spirit;  and  I  therefore  hasten  to  explain 
that  I  am  not  advocating  a  plan  but  that  I  am 
merely  using  this  particular  plan,  of  which  I 
have  such  grateful  memories,  to  illustrate  a  prin- 
ciple. And  the  principle  is  this :  Specialized  sci- 
ence j  whether  physical  or  social,  inevitably  passes 
into  a  stage  of  uncorrelated  scientific  piece-work. 
In  this  stage  of  dismemberment,  science  is  as 
inconclusive  through  its  lack  of  coherence  as  it 
was  in  an  earlier  period  from  its  superficiality. 
That  is,  it  then  had  breadth  without  depth,  it 
now  has  depth  without  breadth. 

Let  me  vary  the  statement  in  this  way :  What 
would  you  think  of  the  state  of  engineering  sci- 


DISUNITY  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES       39 

ence  that  would  go  about  the  problem  of  a  water- 
way between  the  two  oceans  in  this  fashion :  By- 
some  sort  of  gravitation  which  we  may  take  for 
granted,  a  certain  isthmus  becomes,  by  common 
consent,  the  field  of  operations.  Then  groups 
of  people  who  own  steam  shovels  go  down  and 
look  over  the  ground,  and  decide  where  they  can 
work  their  specialty  with  the  most  profit.  At 
the  same  time,  a  group  of  people  who  control 
blasting  processes  make  their  examination,  and 
pick  out  the  spots  where  their  particular  tech- 
nique can  find  the  most  to  do.  Meanwhile,  men 
who  own  pumping  machines  select  spots  where 
they  can  find  employment,  and  other  men  whose 
business  is  to  construct  masonry  pick  out  places 
for  building  locks  and  dams,  etc.  All  these 
people  together  flatter  themselves  that  the  sum 
total  of  this  unorganized  labor  will  turn  out  to 
be  a  Panama  Canal! 

This  is  exaggerated  caricature,  of  course. 
Engineers  know  better  than  that,  and  social  sci- 
entists are  not  quite  as  independent  of  one 
another  as  the  comparison  would  imply ;  but  seri- 
ously, our  co-operation  is  indirect  more  than  it 
is  direct;  it  is  accidental  rather  than  systematic; 
it  is  after  the  event  more  than  introductory  to  it. 
It  is  in  the  nature  of  picking  up  stray  connections 
with  work  in  other  departments,  instead  of  map- 


40         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

ping  out  co-operative  work  to  be  carried  on 
according  to  a  concerted  plan. 

Will  anybody  tell  me  that  I  am  talking  about 
conditions  which  were,  and  which  are  not  any 
longer?  If  that  is  so,  name  a  single  case  in 
the  wide,  wide  world,  of  a  concerted  inquiry  into 
human  experience  in  any  large  range,  according 
to  a  plan  matured  by  conference  between  repre- 
sentatives of  the  cardinal  divisions  of  social  sci- 
ence, and  by  the  organization  of  their  respective 
methods. 

No!  We  are  not  yet  scientific  enough  to  do 
things  in  that  way.  There  may  be  solitary  in- 
stances of  which  I  have  never  heard.  If  they 
existed  they  would  simply  prove  the  rule.  Social 
science  that  would  be  relatively  conclusive  would 
be  an  account  of  the  experience  of  men  in  their 
evolutionary  process  of  finding  themselves — the 
different  factors  and  phases  of  this  evolutionary 
process  being  exhibited  in  accordance  with  their 
actual  functional  values  at  different  stages  of  the 
experience,  not  in  accordance  with  schematic  cate- 
gories which  bound  the  conventional  worlds  of 
the  separate  sciences. 

For  the  sake  of  illustration,  let  us  suppose 
that  the  cardinal  factors  in  a  given  situation 
may  be  reduced  to  the  economic,  the  legal,  the 
psychological,  and  the  ethical,  each  considered 


DISUNITY  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES       41 

both  analytically  and  synthetically.  Have  you 
ever  heard  of  a  single  instance  in  which  repre- 
sentatives of  both  phases  of  these  four  sample 
divisions  of  social  science  have  actually  planned 
and  operated  a  large  investigation  into  the  con- 
crete phenomena  and  the  relative  influence  of 
these  four  factors  in  a  specific  case? 

I  have  not;  and  because  I  have  not,  I  make 
my  assertion  of  today,  which  I  hardly  think  any- 
one from  any  department  of  social  science  will 
deny :  that  we  have  no  team-work  worthy  of  the 
name  of  science  between  the  different  species  of 
scholars  that  are  exploring  the  social  field. 

We  have  nothing  that  compares  respectably 
with  the  work  of  the  naval  or  war  colleges  upon 
their  types  of  problems.  They  assemble  officers 
from  each  branch  of  the  service  to  combine  their 
efforts  in  finding  out  how  all  the  resources  of  all 
the  branches  of  the  service  can  be  brought  to 
bear  in  delivering  or  repelling  a  given  attack. 
What  do  we  do  in  the  social  sciences  ?  We  retire 
into  the  segregation  of  our  respective  depart- 
ments. From  the  viewpoint  of  our  interest  in 
one  group  of  factors  in  the  social  process,  we 
either  cancel  the  other  factors  from  considera- 
tion, or  we  assign  them  our  own  ratings,  and 
then  proceed  to  interpret  the  real  experiences  in 
terms  of  our  specialty. 


42         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

Are  these  vague  generalities?  Then  I  will 
make  them  particular.  I  will  state  them  in  terms 
of  our  own  situation.  Details  vary  in  the  dif- 
ferent universities,  but  in  the  main  matter  I 
have  no  reason  to  think  that  we  are  better  or 
worse  than  the  others;  because,  as  I  hinted,  I 
look  upon  the  case  of  Johns  Hopkins  twenty- 
years  ago  as  only  a  temporary  exception. 

At  least  a  dozen  distinct  methodological  stand- 
points with  reference  to  the  interpretation  of 
human  experience  are  represented  in  our  facul- 
ties, including  the  Divinity  and  Law  schools.  We 
are  now  in  the  eighteenth  year  of  the  life  of 
the  University.  During  that  period,  we  have 
spent  an  aggregate  of  thousands  of  hours  of  the 
time  of  the  faculty  deciding  whether  one  or  two 
units  more  or  less  of  Latin  are  necessary  unto 
salvation;  but  there  has  been  not  a  single  hour 
of  consultation  between  the  men  representing  all 
these  viewpoints  in  social  science  to  see  whether 
we  can  more  effectively  supplement  and  balance 
one  another  in  our  inquiries  into  human  ex- 
perience. 

We  no  longer  believe  in  such  a  thing  as  a 
cure-all  either  for  public  or  private  .ills ;  but  the 
salutary  workings  of  publicity  have  made  men 
rate  it  as  nearer  than  anything  else  available  to 
the  rank  of  a  specific  for  public  wrongs.    I  may 


DISUNITY  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES      43 

reduce  my  claims  to  the  proposition  that  our 
devices  for  publicity  in  the  social  sciences  are 
far  behind  the  demand. 

Probably  it  would  be  hard  to  find  an  investi- 
gator of  repute  in  any  social  science  who 
intentionally  belittles  any  real  factor  in  human 
experience.  Everybody  today  intends  to  give 
full  weight  to  every  factor  that  enters  into  every 
problem  which  he  investigates ;  but  unfortunately 
no  human  mind  is  built  on  an  omniscient  scale. 
Our  mental  limitations  make  each  of  us,  at  best, 
an  involuntary  partisan  after  we  have  reached 
a  certain  outlook.  It  is  impossible  for  us  to  see 
a  given  body  of  facts  in  the  same  perspective  as 
another  man  who  looks  at  them  from  an  equally 
tenable  standpoint  at  a  different  angle;  and 
neither  of  us  may  be  able  to  understand  how  the 
third  man,  observing  from  a  still  different  angle 
of  vision,  can  see  the  affair  as  he  does.  Since 
this  is  the  case,  the  kind  of  problem  which  seri- 
ous investigation  of  human  conditions  confronts 
today  is  too  big  for  the  abstract  departmental 
type  of  procedure. 

Yet  our  present  academic  process  of  accom- 
modating the  different  ex  parte  representations  is, 
for  the  men  who  represent  these  different  stand- 
points to  get  each  other's  views  more  often  indi- 
rectly than  directly;  then,  in  the  presence  of  stu- 


44         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

dents  who  have  not  had  opportunities  fully  to  hear 
representatives  of  the  other  viewpoints,  each  of 
these  partisans  renders  his  opinion  and  returns  an 
estimate  of  the  proportional  value  of  the  other 
people's  views  and  his  own. 

Suppose  it  were  a  case  in  court.  Suppose 
your  individual  interests  were  concerned.  Sup- 
pose you  had  a  sharp  difference  of  judgment 
about  the  equities  of  the  case  with  the  most 
upright  man  of  your  acquaintance.  Would  you 
think  it  the  most  effective  and  just  sort  of  pub- 
licity for  your  opponent  to  appear  in  court  both 
personally  and  by  counsel,  while  your  side  of  the 
case  was  presented  to  the  court  only  in  the  version 
of  your  opponent  and  his  counsel? 

Not  long  ago  a  man  took  his  Doctor's  degree 
in  history  in  a  university  that  I  might  name.  A 
student  in  another  department  was  talking  his 
course  over  with  him  and  said :  "Why,  you  have 
not  had  any  ethnology !"  "Oh,  yes,  I  have,"  con- 
fidently answered  the  newly  fledged  Doctor.  "I 
got  that  all  right.  Professor  So-and-so  gave  us 
three  lectures  on  ethnology  at  the  beginning  of  his 
history  course  the  first  year."  That  young  Doctor 
was  about  as  well  qualified  to  pass  judgment  upon 
the  balance  of  forces  throughout  civilization  as 
he  would  be  to  correlate  science  and  religion,  if 


DISUNITY  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES       45 

he  thought  he  could  get  all  the  science  he  needed 
to  know  by  reading  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis. 

I  presume  that  if  all  the  economists  in  the 
world  could  be  polled  on  the  question  which  living 
economist  has  most  enriched  their  science,  a 
decisive  plurality  would  name  Schmoller.  Thirty- 
six  years  ago  Schmoller  uttered  the  defiant  eco- 
nomic heresy :  ''The  entire  economic  demand  is 
nothing  hut  a  fragment  of  the  concrete  moral 
history  of  a  given  time  and  of  a  given  people." 

Meanwhile  nobody  can  accuse  Schmoller  of 
forgetting  his  own  proposition.  In  a  way,  it  is 
between  the  lines  of  everything  he  has  since  writ- 
ten. But  how  much  more  useful  this  axiom  would 
have  become  to  the  world,  how  much  more  cir- 
cumstantial our  knowledge  of  its  implications, 
how  much  greater  influence  it  would  have  exerted 
upon  academic  science,  and  upon  the  private  and 
public  life  of  civilization,  if  competent  students 
of  comparative  law,  of  comparative  morals,  of 
comparative  politics,  and  of  comparative  eco- 
nomics could  have  co-operated  in  testing  this 
theorem,  and  could  have  put  their  results  in  evi- 
dence over  against  the  various  materialistic  inter- 
pretations of  history. 

Suppose  the  world  wanted  an  answer  to  the 
question,  on  which  President  Jordan  may  or  may 
not  have   committed   himself   recently,   whether 


46         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

France  of  today  is  a  decadent  nation.  Suppose  it 
became  urgent  to  know  whether  France  under 
the  RepubHc  is  progressing  or  retrogressing,  com- 
pared with  France  under  Napoleon  III.  Have 
we  any  organization  competent  to  institute  an 
adequate  investigation  of  such  a  subject?  What 
is  progress  or  retrogression  in  a  nation?  What 
is  decadence  or  development?  Who  knows,  and 
who  has  the  means  of  deciding?  Does  decadence 
consist  in  a  decreasing  birth-rate,  or  may  a 
decreasing  birth-rate  be  a  sign  of  progress?  Is 
fecundity  a  criterion,  or  merely  a  consideration? 
Does  progress  consist  in  an  increased  per  capita 
production  of  wealth,  or  in  a  favorable  balance 
of  trade;  or  may  these  conditions  be  merely  the 
hectic  flush  of  that  greater  white  plague  under 
which  "wealth  accumulates  and  men  decay"  ?  Is 
it  progress  or  regress  in  a  given  case  to  alienate 
church  and  state?  Can  we  measure  progress 
or  regress  by  constitutions  and  laws,  or  must 
we  judge  constitutions  and  laws  by  the  types 
of  people  that  they  tend  to  cultivate,  and  by 
the  sorts  of  character  that  they  bring  into  posi- 
tions of  power?  Has  it  dawned  on  us  that 
national  decadence  or  progress  is  a  balance  sheet 
which  no  accountant  is  yet  competent  to  com- 
pute? Do  we  realize  that  we  have  no  scientific 
criterion  as  to  whether  the  business  of  living  to- 


DISUNITY  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES       47 

gether  in  a  nation  is  prosperous  or  non-prosper- 
ous ?  Not  to  analyze  the  problem  below  its  large 
elements,  merely  to  decide  on  the  main  factors  of 
the  composite  standard  by  which  progress  or 
regress  must  be  measured,  would  require  some 
sort  of  tentative  merging  of  partial  standards,  and 
ascertaining  of  the  normal  ratio  between  the  ele- 
ments of  life  which  are  the  immediate  scientific 
interest  of  biologists,  of  economists,  of  jurists,  of 
psychologists,  and  of  moralists.  Has  anyone 
heard  of  a  serious  attempt  at  scientific  co-opera- 
tion which  might  arrive  at  a  tentative  formula 
for  the  proportion  in  which  these  factors  might 
enter  into  a  criterion  of  decline  or  progress? 

Or  let  us  suppose  a  related  problem  on  the 
constructive  rather  than  on  the  evaluative  side  of 
social  science.  As  one  of  my  friends  in  London 
recently  expressed  it :  *'Some  of  our  leading  social 
theorists  are  trying  to  conjugate  biology  in 
the  imperative  mood."  Under  the  spur  of  Sir 
Francis  Galton,  the  men  referred  to  are  deciding 
that  "eugenics"  must  become  a  national  quest  and 
a  national  policy.  They  see  that  it  is  absurd  to 
apply  science  in  raising  corn  and  breeding  sheep 
while  we  trust  to  luck  in  its  most  reckless  form 
in  producing  men. 

Suppose  now  that  one  of  the  civilized  nations 
reached  the  conclusion  that  the  problem  of  secur- 


48         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

ing  good  heredity  for  future  citizens  is  worthy  of 
scientific  attention.  Waiving  all  questions  about 
possible  ways  and  means  of  artificial  human  selec- 
tion, we  have  not  even  the  beginnings  of  respon- 
sible scientific  co-operation  to  determine  the  type 
of  human  being  to  be  selected,  supposing  we  had 
the  means.  How  shall  we  decide  upon  the  nor- 
mal citizen  standard  ?  What  shall  be  the  formula 
of  the  ingredients  to  be  mixed  in  the  well-bred 
man  of  the  future?  What  will  his  anthropo- 
metric picture  look  like?  What  crossings  of  races 
will  he  represent?  To  what  extent  will  he  be 
the  product  of  a  legal  incubating  system  and  to 
what  extent  a  spontaneous  growth  ?  How  will  he 
be  geared  into  the  vocational  life  of  society? 
What  will  be  his  response  to  the  legal  and  moral 
tradition  that  cements  his  society?  How  shall 
we  find  out?  Can  the  anthropologist  tell  us,  or 
the  ethnologist,  or  the  culture-historian,  or  the 
economist,  or  the  psychologist,  or  the  moralist,  or 
the  apostles  of  either  of  the  "cultures"  in  the 
special  sense?  Each  of  these  can  contribute  some 
facts  and  inferences  that  must  enter  into  the 
specifications.  Each  can  furnish  some  more  or 
less  amateurish  calculations  of  genetic  cause  and 
effect  in  the  particular  sequence  of  development  to 
which  he  has  given  attention;  but  for  purposes 
of  scientific  precision  we  have  not  even  the  pre- 


DISUNITY  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES       49 

liminaries  for  the  kind  of  co-operation  that  can 
present  a  decently  authorized  introductory  de- 
scription of  the  human  type  to  be  taken  as  best 
adapted  to  the  conditions  ahead  in  the  course  of 
moral  evolution. 

Perhaps  it  will  appear  that  the  last  two 
illustrations  are  so  remote  from  the  practical  that 
they  are  not  convincing.  Very  well ;  I  will  state 
the  case,  without  trying  to  elaborate  it,  in  terms 
of  a  problem  which  is  sufficiently  near  at  hand. 
From  the  day  of  prohibitory  tariffs  in  the 
Greek  states  to  Joseph  Chamberlain  and  Senator 
Aldrich,  there  have  been  countless  variations  of 
theory  and  practice  in  the  matter  of  commerce 
with  foreigners.  Nobody  is  satisfied  with  our 
present  American  tariff,  not  even  those  who  get 
the  most  out  of  it,  because  they  want  to  get  more. 
Our  utmost  hopes  of  a  better  tariff  some  time 
in  the  future  are  pinned  to  an  embryo  tariff 
commission. 

Suppose  we  had  a  real  commission.  Who  is 
competent  to  instruct  the  commission  how  its  in- 
vestigations should  be  planned? 

The  question  really  presented  by  a  tariff 
policy  is  not  a  question  of  finance,  not  a  question 
of  politics,  not  a  question  of  economics;  it  is  a 
question  of  civilization  in  all  its  length  and 
breadth  and  depth  and  height.    A  tariff  is  one  of 


50         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

those  devices  which  directly  affects  certain  visible 
interests,  which  indirectly  promotes  or  retards  the 
whole  human  process.  The  total  resources  of  a 
co-operative  science  of  society  would  be  able  to 
furnish  at  best  only  guidance  in  experimentation 
upon  the  effects  of  different  sorts  of  tariffs  or 
no  tariff  upon  the  entire  process  of  life.  Mean- 
while decent  scientific  procedure  with  reference 
to  the  tariff  problem  would  call  into  requisition 
not  merely  a  commission  to  assemble  details  but 
an  advisory  council,  made  up  of  scientific  repre- 
sentatives of  all  the  great  life  interests,  both 
immediate  and  academic;  and  the  task  of  this 
council  would  be  to  shape  up  each  successive 
phase  of  the  tariff  problem,  so  that  it  would  pay 
proportional  respect  to  the  physical,  and  eco- 
nomic, and  legal,  and  moral,  and  intellectual,  and 
cultural  factors  involved. 

Any  tariff  policy  whatever  sets  in  motion 
influences  which  affect  for  better  or  for  worse 
the  whole  big  task  of  humanity.  There  is  no 
co-operation  of  social  scientists  thus  far  which  in 
any  respectable  fashion  recognizes  the  complexi- 
ties of  the  civilizing  task  which  enlightened 
society  must  undertake. 

If  time  allowed,  I  should  be  glad  to  show  the 
same  thing  with  respect  to  the  problem  of  taxa- 
tion. 


DISUNITY  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES       51 

The  degree  of  goodness  or  badness  in  a  sys- 
tem of  taxation  is  a  large  factor  in  the  ability  of 
every  human  being  to  make  the  most  of  his  life. 
While  broader  consideration  has  been  given  in 
some  countries  than  in  others  to  problems  of 
taxation,  and  while  the  technique  of  taxation  has 
been  worked  out  very  elaborately  from  certain 
points  of  view,  the  confusion  and  the  injustice  of 
the  systems  of  taxation  actually  in  use,  and  espe- 
cially in  this  country,  are  a  challenge  which  the 
social  sciences  as  a  whole  have  never  organized 
themselves  to  accept. 

I  repeat  then  that  the  abstractions  which  we 
call  social  sciences  have  carried  on  their  piece- 
work in  such  a  w^ay  that  each  of  them  has  to  its 
credit  splendid  achievements,  when  we  compare 
these  results  with  the  mental  acquisitions  of 
earlier  men.  I  am  comparing  our  scientific  situa- 
tion, however,  not  with  the  past,  but  with  the 
demands  of  our  present  complex  life.  Measured 
by  the  requisitions  upon  present  scholarship,  the 
social  sciences  are  today  merely  preparing  pre- 
digested  mental  food  for  adolescents  instead  of 
developing  all  the  resources  of  fully  grown  men 
for  co-operative  research. 

Partly  as  a  commentary  on  the  criticism  that 
I  am  dealing  with  bogies  which  were  put  out  of 
business  long  ago,   I  conclude  with  a  passage 


52         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

from  the  current  number  of  Schmoller's  Jahr- 
buch  (L  Heft,  1910)  which  I  suppose  I  may  be 
permitted  to  regard  as  fairly  up  to  date.  In  that 
journal,  Dr.  Otto  Neurath  of  Vienna  has  a  long 
critical  review  of  Wundt's  recent  volume.  Die 
Logik  der  Geisteswissenschaften.  Bear  in  mind 
that  the  reviewer  is  not  in  collusion  with  me.  I 
have  not  bribed  him  to  testify  in  my  favor.  He 
wrote  from  a  standpoint  quite  different  from 
mine ;  but  it  is  an  interesting  coincidence  that  an 
entirely  unsolicited  message  of  agreement  should 
come  to  hand  from  a  distant  source  while  I  was 
writing  this  lecture.  This  is  the  closing  passage 
of  the  review : 

The  future  of  scientific  investigation,  not  merely  in 
the  realm  of  the  social  sciences,  but  of  all  the  sciences, 
will  lead  in  an  ascending  degree  to  the  increasing  recog- 
nition of  the  coherence  of  all  scientific  thought.  The 
separation  into  distinct  disciplines  will  no  longer  have, 
as  its  last  result,  the  isolation  of  the  investigators,  but 
a  more  general,  more  comprehensive  investigation  will 
arrive  at  the  principles  which  are  to  be  held  in  common, 
and  thus  will  arouse  the  consciousness  that  science  is  a 
unity.  The  individual  will  then  be  able  easily  to  take 
a  general  bird's-eye  view  of  the  total  system  of  the 
sciences,  while  today  he  confronts  a  chaos.  What  is 
common  to  all  the  sciences  will  lend  itself  to  distinct 
formulation,  and  as  a  consequence,  an  organization  of 
scientific  labor  will  be  possible. 

We  have  today  come  to   the  pass  that  there  is   an 


DISUNITY  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES       53 

overgrowth  of  specialties  in  many  a  scientific  territory, 
while  no  one  surveys  the  whole  territory.  We  call  that 
division  of  labor.  We  should  call  it  splitteration  of 
labor,  for  we  properly  speak  of  division  of  labor  only 
when  a  whole  is  accomplished  through  the  co-operation 
of  many.  How  few  today  see  the  whole  of  one  science 
or  even  of  one  department!  And  there  are  many  who 
find  in  this  the  glory  of  scientific  labor.  All  special 
investigation  gets  its  sense  and  its  justification  in  being 
the  investigation  of  a  part  which  is  to  be  put  presently 
into  its  place  in  a  knowledge  of  a  whole.  In  order  to 
bring  about  these  combinations,  some  such  co-operation 
must  take  place  as  Kant  proposed,  but  probably  not  in 
quite  the  same  form  which  he  had  in  mind.  It  would 
be  above  all  desirable  if  co-operative  research  by  a  large 
number  of  scholars  could  be  carried  on  under  unified 
leadership.  A  collection  of  special  researches  does  not 
constitute  a  whole.  That  result  can  be  attained  only  by 
the  concerted  labor  of  many  scholars  concentrating  their 
methods  upon  a  common  problem.  A  series  of  special 
works,  like  Helmolt's  Weltgeschichte,  oder  die  Kultur 
der  Gegenwart,  is  supposed  to  afford  the  layman  a 
composite  picture.^  How  is  that  possible,  when  the  pro- 
jectors at  the  same  time  assert  that  neither  of  the  col- 
laborators is  able  to  produce  a  picture  of  the  totality?  In 
this  case  again,  the  result  is  that  no  one  surveys  the 
whole,  and  we  merely  observe  how  differently  the  various 
authors  often  treat  the  same  thing,  that  there  is  often  no 
continuation  by  a  later  writer  where  an  earlier  one  had 
made  a  beginning — in  short  that  the  binding  threads  are 

^  Neurath  might  have  added  that  Lord  Acton's  Cam- 
bridge History  is  in  some  respects  a  still  better  illustration 
of  the  point  he  is  about  to  make. 


54         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

lacking.  Along  with  the  special  treatises  there  should 
appear  in  greater  number  than*  has  lately  been  the  case 
surveys  by  great  investigators.  Today  we  are  hindering 
rather  than  promoting  such  work.  How  much  would  be 
gained  if  commentaries  were  now  written  upon  com- 
prehensive works,  as  was  the  general  custom  in  the  six- 
teenth, seventeenth,  and  eighteenth  centuries.  We  have, 
for  example,  such  commentaries  on  Adam  Smith.  If 
this  custom  were  systematically  developed,  it  would  be 
at  least  possible  that  a  special  investigator  might  rein- 
force and  fill  out  the  work  of  the  general  surveyor,  and 
in  such  work  as  that  there  would  be  genuine  division  of 
labor.  Much  is  also  to  be  anticipated  from  the  fact  that 
individual  investigators,  crossing  the  limits  of  their  par- 
ticular territory,  seek  the  means  of  combination  in  which 
others  will  join  them.  Still  further,  the  common  work  is 
promoted  by  such  men  as  Jevons,  Pierson,  and  Enriques, 
who  examine  the  general  foundations  of  science.  This 
whole  movement  will  rescue  us  from  the  scatteration  of 
labor,  and  will  lead  to  a  genuine  correlation  of  labor. 
Only  through  genuine  combination  of  scientific  effort 
can  we  arrive  at  a  real  participation  in  the  great  achieve- 
ments of  the  human  mind,  and  a  just  conception  of  the 
world  as  a  whole. 


LECTURE  III 

THE  SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  THE 
UNITY  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

In  the  first  lecture  I  tried  to  make  the  fact 
clear  that  a  network  of  causes  and  effects  weaves 
the  life  of  men  through  the  ages  and  around  the 
world  into  a  connected  whole.  That  is,  human 
experience  throughout  its  length  and  breadth  is  a 
unity.  I  pointed  out  that  our  conceptions  of 
science  forbid  us  to  assume  that  we  have  arrived 
at  knowledge  which  deserves  to  rank  as  a  science 
of  human  experience  until  our  knowledge  is  it- 
self a  unity,  that  is,  balanced  and  interconnected 
reflection  of  the  system  of  reciprocal  influences 
of  which  we  find  real  life  to  be  composed. 

In  the  second  lecture  I  argued  that  the  very 
progress  which  has  been  made  in  the  social  sci- 
ences is  one  of  the  reasons  why  our  present  stage 
of  scientific  development  exhibits  a  disunity  of 
the  social  sciences. 

I  repeat  that  I  am  not  denying  progress  when  I 
uncover  this  fact  of  scientific  segregation  now 
that  scientific  co-operation  is  imperative.  If  it 
were  worth  while  to  discuss  that  point  further,  I 
should  urge  that  this  very  disunity  of  the  social 
sciences  at  the  present  moment  is  itself  one  of  the 

55 


56 


THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 


proofs  that  science  has  been  advancing.  Some 
of  the  things  that  have  to  be  done,  in  order  to 
make  thought  about  human  Hfe  scientific,  could 
not  have  been  done  without  going  through  a 
period  of  isolated  special  research.  I  mean  of 
course  that,  all  things  considered,  there  were  no 
available  means  of  reaching  our  present  grade  of 
scientific  progress  except  by  this  freedom  of 
exploration,  which  gave  everyone  an  open  field 
to  follow  his  own  bent. 

Speaking  in  general  of  European  thought 
from  the  revival  of  learning  to  the  first  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  we  may  represent  it  as 
occupying  at  most  three  or  four  separate  areas, 
according  to  our  system  of  classification,  thus : 


Fig.  A 


Now,  roughly  speaking,  during  the  half -cen- 
tury between  1775  and  1825  the  intellectual 
activities  which  had  previously  been  kept  within 
these  boundaries  had  straggled  into  a  large  num- 
ber of  independent  courses,  and  from  that  time 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     57 

until  now  the  whole  plateau  of  human  knowl- 
edge has  been  divded  into  strips  set  off  from  one 
another  by  thin  streamlets  of  science  somewhat 
in  this  fashion: 


a. 

i 

C             t 

i      < 

''      / 

1 

f         1 

I 

t          1 

<• 

Fig.  B 


Each  of  these  narrow  lanes,  which  have  taken 
the  place  of  the  broader  tracts  above,  repre- 
sents a  deeper  current  in  place  of  the  wider  and 
shallower  mass  in  which  it  took  its  rise.  While 
human  knowledge  gathered  in  three  or  four 
broad  basins  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
it  began  to  move  in  an  increasing  number  of 
parallel  grooves  which  tended  to  develop  more 
rapidly  downward  than  outward.  We  might 
liken  what  goes  on  under  this  method  to  a  system 
of  parallel  fluids,  not  directly  communicating 
with  one  another,  but  influencing  one  another  in 
some  degree  by  involuntary  processes  of  infiltra- 
tion or  osmosis  or  capillary  attraction.     Now  I 


58         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

will  not  apologize  for  mixed  figures,  because 
there  is  nothing  closely  analogous  with  the  exact 
history  of  social  science,  and  I  am  using  this 
clumsy  jumble  of  comparisons  to  represent  differ- 
ent phases  of  it.  I  think  we  are  all  prepared  to 
see,  however,  that  neither  the  stage  A  nor  the 
stage  B  in  social  science  represents  anything  that 
any  of  us  can  regard  as  very  satisfying  to  any- 
body's conception  of  scientific  efficiency.  And 
neither  of  these  stages  impresses  any  of  us  as 
likely  to  be  very  permanent,  after  our  attention 
has  once  been  called  to  it.  As  a  general  propo- 
sition, every  social  scientist  admits  that  there 
should  be  the  completest  possible  intercommuni- 
cation between  the  divisions  of  social  science, 
whether  these  are  few  or  many.  I  cannot  believe 
that  a  scientist  of  any  repute  can  be  found  in  the 
world  today  who  would  maintain  that  the  means 
of  intercommunication  between  the  divisions  of 
social  science  are  as  efficient  as  scientific  complete- 
ness demands.  To  express  the  situation  in  a 
purely  mechanical  figure,  which  is  familiar  to 
everybody  today,  but  would  have  meant  nothing 
to  anybody  fifty  years-  ago :  Before  social  science 
can  pass  from  a  relatively  rudimentary  stage  to 
the  next  more  evolved  stage,  its  procedures  must 
develop  systems  of  communication  that  may  be 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     59 

symbolized  by  the  lines  of  connection  on  a  tele- 
phone switchboard,  thus: 


Accordingly  there  will  be  a  direct  and  prompt 
exchange  of  influence  not  only  between  a  and 
b,  but  between  each  of  the  separate  major  and 
minor  centers  of  investigation  and  all  the  rest. 
Here  the  telephone  figure  fails,  and  the  nearest 
comparison  that  occurs  to  me  as  a  symbol  of  the 
result  or  output  of  all  this  telephonic  communica- 
tion would  be  an  ideal  news-service,  in  which  the 
knowledge  derived  by  the  use  of  all  this  inter- 
communicating machinery  would  be  organized 


6o        THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

and  published,  not  according  to  the  standard  of 
its  capacity  to  arouse  attention,  but  in  the  ratio 
of  its  actual  importance  for  the  different  interests 
that  make  up  the  normal  processes  of  life. 

If  these  rude  figures  have  at  all  answered 
their  purpose,  they  enable  me  to  put  before  you 
in  a  graphic  way  the  rough  general  facts  about 
the  role  that  we  sociologists  have  assumed  in  the 
development  of  social  science.  In  a  word,  while 
social  scientists  were  nearly  all  so  busy  digging 
deeper  the  channels  in  their  several  lines  of  re- 
search that  they  could  spare  very  little  thought 
for  what  their  neighbors  were  doing,  or  for  the 
general  situation  which  all  this  paralleling  of 
unconnected  investigation  produced,  here  and 
there  a  few  stray  voices  began  to  be  heard  saying 
that  the  situation  B  ought  to  be  more  like  C. 

Now,  this  is  not  all  that  sociology  has  come 
to  amount  to  since,  but  it  will  pay  to  drive  this 
third  peg  down.  Let  us  assume  then  for  a  while 
that  sociology  means  no  more  than  would  be  in- 
volved in  the  proposition :  The  situation  B  ought 
to  become  the  situation  C.  That  was  and  is  the 
substance  of  the  sociological  assertion  of  the  unity 
of  social  science.  It  is  the  proposition  that  social 
science  is  necessarily  investigation  of  influences 
which  human  beings  exert  upon  one  another.  It 
rests  upon  the  elementary  knowledge  that  human 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     6i 

experience  is  the  resultant  of  forces  which  we 
may  reduce  to  two  main  groups:  First,  the 
reactions  between  men  and  physical  nature; 
second,  the  reactions  of  men  upon  one  another. 
In  the  whole  realm  of  knowledge,  there  is  a  larger 
unity  under  which  these  two  phases  of  knowledge 
have  to  be  comprehended  and  proportioned. 
Speaking  now  only  of  the  unity  within  that 
shorter  diameter  occupied  by  human  experience 
in  the  narrower  sense,  the  sociologists  declare 
that  the  experience  hounded  by  the  reactions  be- 
tween men  and  physical  nature  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  reactions  of  men  with  one  another  on 
the  other,  is  an  interconnected  experience,  and 
that  we  shall  have  a  science  of  it  only  in  the  pro- 
portion of  our  insight  into  the  way  and  degree 
in  which  each  item  of  this  experience  is  affected 
by  every  other  item  of  it. 

Before  we  go  farther,  I  will  put  this  large 
generalization  into  a  concrete  form.  The  pos- 
sible illustrations  are  limited  only  by  the  number 
of  situations  past  or  present  in  which  two  or 
more  persons  have  actually  had  any  sort  of  deal- 
ings with  one  another ;  and  the  difficulty  is  merely 
in  selecting  a  single  illustration  which  as  many 
people  as  possible  have  done  some  sort  of  think- 
ing about,  and  which  as  many  as  possible  recog- 
nize as  a  problem  both  scientific  and  practical. 


62         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

Let  us  take  the  fact  that  the  liquor  traffic 
exists,  and  that  indescribable  evils  are  known  to 
cluster  around  it.  How  shall  we  account  for 
this  phenomenon?  How  shall  we  place  it  in  the 
network  of  human  experience?  Certain  types  of 
men  easily  dispose  of  it  as  one  of  the  works  of 
the  devil,  that  has  no  part  or  lot  with  anything 
righteous,  and  that  deserves  no  consideration 
beyond  violent  extinction.  But,  strangely  enough, 
men  living  side  by  side,  who  are  equally  good 
parents,  equally  good  business  men,  equally  faith- 
ful to  their  political  duties,  who  are  equally  con- 
scientious supporters  of  the  church,  respectively 
assert  and  deny  that  liquor  and  the  liquor  trade 
are  unmitigated  evils.  If  it  comes  to  a  vote 
whether  there  shall  be  saloons  in  a  town  or  not,  it 
would  be  a  very  unprecise  assertion  that  all  the 
good  men  vote  one  way  and  the  bad  men  another. 
The  fact  is  that  the  line  of  cleavage  between  good 
men  and  bad  cannot  be  so  easily  drawn  as  that, 
because  the  actual  meaning  of  the  liquor  traffic 
cannot  be  settled  by  that  summary  sort  of  distinc- 
tion. In  an  American  city  from  twenty  to  forty 
nationalities  may  be  represented  among  the  voters. 
The  attitude  of  the  men  of  these  different  racial 
stocks  toward  the  liquor  business  is  a  resultant  of 
as  many  different  national  experiences,  summed 
up,  first,  in  actual  physical  organization,  then  in 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     63 

social  custom,  religious  ban  or  sanction,  legal 
status,  moral  standard,  and  economic  policy — 
each  and  all  modified  by  the  personal  equation  of 
the  individuals  concerned.  To  the  one  man  his 
alcohol,  whatever  the  preferred  form,  seems  as 
much  a  matter  of  course  as  to  another  man  his 
potato  or  to  another  his  pie.  To  some  of  these 
men  alcohol  in  any  form  seems  to  carry  the  curse 
of  God.  To  others  the  right  to  use  alcohol  as 
they  please  seems  more  self-evident  and  funda- 
mental than  the  right  of  free  thought  or  free 
speech. 

Now  I  am  not  making  or  implying  an  argu- 
ment in  support  of  the  liquor  business,  nor  do  I 
mean  that  all  citizens  are  bound  to  master  the 
history  of  the  customs,  laws,  religions,  ethics, 
and  economics  of  each  race  represented  in  the 
voting  list  before  they  decide  whether  their  vote 
shall  be  "wet"  or  "dry"  in  a  local  election,  any 
more  than  I  would  demand  that  a  man  must 
have  a  Doctor's  degree  in  chemistry  before  he  is 
allowed  to  turn  in  a  fire  alarm.  I  do  mean 
that  if  we  are  to  arrive  at  a  scientific  interpreta- 
tion of  the  liquor  business,  if  we  are  to  propose 
a  scientific  justification  for  a  practical  policy  and 
program  with  reference  to  it,  on  the  ground  of 
the  ascertained  facts  of  human  experience,  if  we 
are  to  reckon  with  the  fact  of  experience  that 


64        THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

community  action  is  never  long  dictated  by  a 
sectional  will,  but  that  it  has  to  be,  in  the 
long  run,  an  accommodation  of  all  the  wills  in  the 
community,  then  a  knowledge  of  all  the  evils  of 
alcoholism  visited  unto  the  third  or  fourth  gen- 
eration will  not  furnish  the  whole  of  that  inter- 
pretation, nor  of  that  justification.  The  decisive 
element,  both  on  the  abstract  and  on  the  con- 
structive side  of  our  social  science,  in  the  item 
of  the  liquor  business,  will  be  the  actual  mental 
and  moral  reactions  toward  the  business  on  the 
part  of  all  the  elements  of  the  population  that 
hold  the  fate  of  the  business  in  their  hands. 
Social  science  in  that  connection  would  be  ex- 
haustive knowledge  of  the  several  national  and 
other  heredities  and  traditions  that  have  prede- 
termined the  different  types  of  group  attitudes 
toward  the  liquor  business,  which  approxi- 
mately account  for  the  attitude  and  conduct  of 
individuals  within  the  groups.  Social  science,  in 
this  particular,  would  be,  on  the  one  hand,  such 
comprehensive  knowledge  of  the  different  ele- 
ments which  enter  into  the  demand  for  liquor  in 
a  given  case,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  such  com- 
prehensive knowledge  of  the  different  effects  of 
the  use  of  liquor  in  a  given  community,  that  the 
course  of  action  indicated  by  these  comple- 
mentary kinds  of  knowledge  might  be  mapped 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     65 

out  and  proposed  to  the  controlling  elements  in 
the  community  with  as  much  authority  as  at- 
taches to  the  plans  of  competent  sanitary  engi- 
neers for  an  adequate  system  of  drainage.  In 
other  words,  my  proposition  is  that  every  situa- 
tion in  our  physical  or  spiritual  life  is,  in  an 
analogous  way,  a  junction  point  for  all  the  lines 
of  cause  and  effect  that  have  been  set  in  motion 
by  previous  human  activity;  and  that  there  can 
be  no  credible  science  of  any  portion  of  our 
human  situation  which  is  not  in  part  a  calculus 
of  the  ratio  in  which  every  phase  of  previous  and 
contemporary  activity  enters  as  a  factor  into  the 
given  situation  as  a  resultant. 

Now,  I  repeat,  something  of  this  has  been 
understood  time  out  of  mind  by  everyone  who 
has  reflected  upon  the  human  lot.  In  a  way  and 
in  a  degree  Homer  tried  to  show  it  when  he  pic- 
tured the  lines  of  cause  and  effect  which  he  could 
make  out,  and  then  covered  up  his  inability 
to  trace  actual  relations  farther  by  resorting 
to  the  stage  machinery  of  mythical  actors  throw- 
ing their  weight  into  the  scale  and  queering  the 
course  of  things  that  would  otherwise  have  fol- 
lowed. From  Plato  to  Hegel  there  were  innu- 
merable advances  and  retreats  toward  and  away 
from  consistent  use  of  this  more  or  less  fleeting 
perception  that  every  human  action  and  every 


66         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

social  condition  or  situation  is,  in  some  sense  and 
degree,  a  function  not  only  of  the  physical 
surroundings  but  also  of  every  previous  and 
contemporary  human  action,  condition,  and  situ- 
ation. 

But  while  that  perception  was  in  the  world, 
and  while  scarcely  any  scholar  would  have  denied 
it  in  the  abstract,  it  had  about  the  same  kind  and 
measure  of  influence  upon  the  actual  progress  of 
the  social  sciences  which  the  belief  of  Christendom 
in  eternal  punishment  has  had  upon  all  classes  and 
conditions  of  men  six  days  out  of  seven  in  the 
countries  where  the  belief  has  been  professed.  In 
other  words,  while  men  in  either  of  the  lines  in 
B  above  may  have  acknowledged,  under  pressure, 
or  in  response  to  some  extraordinary  stimulus  to 
their  imagination,  that  the  course  of  things  in 
their  respective  lines  had  something  to  do  with 
the  sequences  followed  in  the  other  lines,  the 
actual  relations  of  the  social  sciences  to  one 
another  was  more  like  B  than  C. 

It  was  this  state  of  things  which  drew  from 
Comte  in  1830  the  memorable  remark  that  the 
trouble  with  the  world  is  the  anarchy  of  its  funda- 
mental ideas.  What  he  had  in  mind  was  pre- 
cisely the  situation  represented  by  B. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  situation,  I  may  cite 
the  preposterous  proposition  of  von  Mohl  in  1859, 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     67 

when  he  spoke  with  as  much  authority  as  anyone 
in  Germany  for  academic  poHtical  science,  and 
when  he  laid  down  the  principle  in  his  Ency- 
clopddie  der  Staatswissenschaften  that  the  po- 
litical sciences  had  nothing  to  do  with  political 
economy.  As  another  illustration  I  may  come 
down  as  late  as  1884,  and  quote  the  opening 
paragraph  of  General  Walker's  textbook  in  po- 
litical economy.     These  are  the  author's  words: 

Political  economy  has  to  do  with  no  other  subject 
whatever  than  wealth.  The  economist  may  also  be  a 
social  philosopher,  a  moralist,  or  a  statesman  ....  but 
not  on  that  account  should  the  several  subjects  be  con- 
founded. The  more  strictly  the  several  branches  of 
inquiry  are  kept  apart,  the  better  it  will  be  for  each 
and  all. 

The  frankest  case  that  ever  came  under  my 
personal  observation  was  in  1905.  In  that  year 
the  editor  of  the  American  Historical  Review,  the 
organ  of  the  American  Historical  Association, 
returned  to  the  publishers  a  certain  rather  elabo- 
rate book  on  sociology.  In  a  letter  the  editor 
stated  that  the  book  would  no  doubt  be  of  interest 
to  sociologists,  but  that  he  could  not  notice  it  in 
his  journal  because  it  contained  nothing  that  con- 
cerned the  historian.  Whether  that  particular 
book  was  particularly  good  or  particularly  bad  of 
its  kind  is  not  the  point.    The  crucial  thing  about 


(^^rBR^»r> 


68        THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

it  for  the  present  purpose  was  that  two-thirds  of 
its  contents  really  consisted  of  an  argument  about 
the  sort  of  excavating  and  tunneling  and  cross- 
cutting  which  it  is  most  profitable  to  do  in  getting 
out  historical  material.  The  author  may  not  have 
established  his  case,  but  it  certainly  is  of  concern 
to  every  scientific  historian  to  know  whether  there 
are  open  questions  in  historical  methodology. 
Until  the  sort  of  thesis  which  the  book  in  ques- 
tion contains  has  been  tested  and  disposed  of  in 
a  scientific  way,  the  historian  who  declares  that 
his  colleagues  have  no  concern  with  it  libels  his 
profession.  Besides  that,  he  affords  a  sadly 
belated  example  of  the  stage  of  scientific  exclu- 
siveness  represented  by  the  diagram  B. 

Accordingly,  beginning  with  1830,  there 
appeared  more  and  more  men  who  made  it  their 
business  to  emphasize  this  common  knowledge  of 
interrelations.  They  took  as  their  division  of 
labor  publicity  work  for  the  perception  that  the 
kinds  of  human  relationships  which  had  been  set 
apart  from  one  another  in  abstract  isolation  by 
social  scientists  of  the  type  B  intimately  and 
incessantly  modified  one  another.  These  men 
began  to  ring  the  changes  on  the  assertion  that 
every  social  science  is  an  abortion  which  does  not 
adjust  itself  in  principle  and  in  practice  to  this 
all-pervading  fact  in  the  human  lot.     Some  of 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     69 

these  men  presently  became  known  as  sociologists. 
They  could  not  offer  a  specific  substitute  for  the 
social  sciences  in  the  form  of  diagram  B,  but 
they  preached  in  season  and  out  of  season  that 
the  state  of  things  which  the  diagram  B  repre- 
sents was  merely  a  passing  stage  in  the  evolution 
of  real  science,  not  a  condition  with  which  anyone 
could  remain  satisfied. 

I  have  hinted  before  that  the  charges  which 
have  been  brought  against  the  sociologists  may 
be  summed  up  in  two  counts :  first,  nobody  would 
be  fool  enough  to  believe  anything  that  they  have 
to  say;  second,  everybody  always  knew  every- 
thing they  have  to  say,  and  there  is  no  use 
at  this  late  day  in  making  a  fuss  about  it. 
Strangely  enough,  both  of  these  verdicts  were 
sometimes  handed  down  by  the  same  tribunal; 
yet  the  contradiction  is  not  hard  to  explain.  It 
is  by  no  means  wholly  to  the  discredit  of  the 
critics. 

In  a  word,  the  new  apostles  of  unity  in  social 
science  felt  themselves  bound  to  declare  out  of 
hand  what  sort  of  a  unity  real  life  actually  is, 
which  the  abstract  social  sciences  had  partitioned 
off  into  a  collection  of  non-communicating  com- 
partments. These  proposed  renderings  of  real  life 
turned  out  to  be  analogies,  and  the  originator  of 
each  and  his  imitators  were  understood  to  mean 


70         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

that  the  real  world  was  literally  what  the  analo- 
gies represented.  Of  course  no  perfect  parallel 
for  human  experience  is  within  our  range  of 
knowledge.  Life  is  more  complex  than  anything 
incidental  to  it;  and  any  attempt  to  picture  it  by 
means  of  something  more  comprehensible  verges 
on  the  folly  of  the  traditional  Greek  fool  who 
tried  to  give  possible  purchasers  an  idea  of  what 
his  house  was  like  by  exhibiting  a  brick  pried 
from  the  wall.  Of  these  exhibits  which  did  not 
exhibit,  people  very  naturally  said :  We  will  have 
none  of  them.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  true 
that  everybody  engaged  in  social  science  at  all 
held  some  sort  of  notion  that  all  things  somehow 
hang  together  in  human  experience.  The  ways 
in  which  things  hang  together  have  proved  so 
elusive  that  most  people  credit  themselves  with 
having  done  thei..  whole  duty  when  they  ac- 
knowledge the  abstract  proposition  of  unity. 
They  want  the  concession  treated,  however,  like 
their  church  confession,  "We  are  miserable 
oflFenders."  That  is,  no  one  should  presume  in 
everyday  affairs  upon  this  privileged  communica- 
tion. When  anybody  has  proposed  a  concrete 
description  or  theory  of  the  unity  of  life  to  which 
all  might  have  subscribed  as  a  harmless  abstract 
idea,    the   luckless   presumer   was   treated   very 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     71 

much  like  the  occasional  people  who  declare  that 
they  have  arrived  at  perfect  holiness. 

The  variations  of  early  attempts  to  interpret 
the  unique  unity  of  human  experience  may  be 
reduced  to  three  species:  the  sentimental,  the 
mathematical,  and  the  biological.  The  dividing 
line  of  chronology  cannot  be  drawn  between 
these  types.  All  of  them  seem  to  be  perennial. 
I  will  refer  to  them,  however,  in  the  order 
named. 

The  sentimental  species  of  sociologists — the 
most  picturesque  of  them  never  called  themselves 
by  that  name,  but  they  were  a  part  of  the  socio- 
logical movement,  and  I  will  not  try  to  cover  up 
the  relationship — range  from  Fourier,  with  his 
harmony  of  the  human  passions  and  his  scheme 
of  standardizing  human  society  in  blocks  of  six- 
teen hundred  persons,  and  Robert  Owen,  with 
his  co-operative  factories,  to  .en  like  Frederick 
W.  Robertson,  Charles  Kingsley,  and  John 
Ruskin.  Although  these  .latter  were  essentially 
sane,  it  was  true  of  them  as  of  the  less  sane  of 
the  species  that  their  emotional  reactions  were 
more  in  evidence  than  their  analytic  processes. 
From  least  to  most  respectable,  the  best  that  can 
be  said  of  this  type  was  that  their  zeal  was  out 
of  proportion  to  their  knowledge.  It  is  no  won- 
der that  they  could  furnish  little  light  and  lead- 


72         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

ing  for  the  realignment  of  science.  They  did  a 
great  deal  on  the  whole  to  spur  the  world's  con- 
science. By  this  they  indirectly  prepared  the  way 
for  a  reconsideration  of  the  social  sciences.  On 
the  surface,  however,  while  they  lived,  they 
seemed  to  function  chiefly  as  promoters  of  the 
gaiety  of  nations.  They  were  satirized  as  people 
who  demanded  that  the  laws  should  give  legisla- 
tive force  to  their  dreams.  Their  ideas  were  de- 
scribed as  schemes  to  lodge  all  the  world  in 
square  blocks,  each  of  whose  four  sides  should 
always  face  the  sunlight.  The  scorn  which 
everybody  felt,  or  affected  to  feel,  for  their 
futilities  received  its  most  dogmatic  expression  in 
Carlyle's  elephantine  phrase,  "philanthropistic 
phosphorescences  r 

The  mathematical  sociologists  may  be  typified 
by  August  Comte.  And  I  may  incidentally  use 
him  besides  as  an  illustration  of  a  fact  which  is 
equally  true  of  all  the  sociologists,  namely,  that 
whatever  their  intellectual  faults,  these  faults 
were  not  strictly  their  own.  They  were  rather 
indexes  of  the  thinking  of  their  time.  The  earlier 
sociologists  did  not  invent  their  mental  vagaries. 
Those  whimsical  methods  of  dealing  with  prob- 
lems which  require  critical  processes  had  been 
nurtured  and  sheltered  in  all  the  sciences,  and 
when  they  were  used  in  attempts  to  improve  the 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     73 

sciences  they  were  themselves  vivid  evidences  of 
the  need  of  improvement. 

When  Comte  was  getting  his  education  there 
was  probably  no  single  book  in  the  world  which 
more  intensely  reflected  the  type  of  thinking  cul- 
tivated by  contemporary  scholars  than  Laplace's 
Mecanique  celeste.  The  first  volume  of  this  work 
was  published  in  1799.  A  popular  interpretation 
of  the  same  system  had  appeared  in  1796  under 
the  title  Exposition  of  the  System  of  the  World. 
The  Germans  translated  it  the  next  year.  A 
little  later  the  larger  work  was  translated  into 
English,  with  valuable  annotations,  by  our  own 
Bowditch.  Comte  was  a  mathematician,  and 
quite  in  harmony  with  the  version  which  the 
ideas  crystallized  by  Laplace  had  impressed  upon 
the  mental  fashion  of  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Comte  thought  of  the  universe 
and  all  it  contained  as  a  unity  of  two  comple- 
mentary systems  of  mechanism :  namely,  celestial 
physics  and  terrestrial  physics.  As  everyone 
knows  who  has  heard  of  Comte,  the  world  pre- 
sented itself  to  him  so  exclusively  in  the  likeness 
of  mechanism  that  in  his  subdivisions  of  the  ma- 
chinery he  found  no  vocation  for  psychology. 
Human  life  in  his  rendering  was  a  vast  machine. 
The  sociology  that  he  offered  to  the  world  as  a 
corrective  of  the  dislocation  of  the  social  sciences 


74         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

was  a  technology  of  social  machinery,  a  hand- 
book of  the  soulless  forces  which  turned  the 
wheels  of  the  ages. 

Every  once  in  a  while,  even  today,  some 
smarty  comes  to  life  with  the  discovery  that 
there  is  nothing  to  sociology  because  Comte, 
who  invented  the  word,  tried  to  explain  society 
simply  as  a  solar  system  on  a  reduced  scale. 
But  that  hypothesis  was  simply  the  best  stagger 
which  anyone  could  make  at  that  mathemati- 
cally obsessed  time  toward  an  intelligible  ex- 
pression of  the  connection  of  things.  The 
important  matter  was  that  the  human  mind  was 
at  that  time  in  travail  with  the  mighty  conception 
of  the  wholeness  of  human  experience.  We  are 
bunglers  if  we  miss  that  essential  fact  for  wonder 
that  the  idea  at  its  birth  was  not  full  grown.  The 
main  thing  was  utterance  of  the  fundamental 
thought  of  wholeness.  The  particular  picture  of 
wholeness  which  was  proposed,  the  wisdom  or 
unwisdom  of  adopting  a  particular  scientific  name 
for  the  proposing  of  the  picture,  is  a  relatively 
insignificant  detail.  The  fulness  of  time  had 
come  for  concerted  attention  to  the  factor  of  the 
scientific  situation  which  had  been  persistently 
neglected,  which  was  the  pass-key  to  the  next 
stage  of  science,  namely,  the  universal  reciprocity 
between  the  parts  of  human  experience,  which 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     75 

makes  life  some  sort  of  a  system  of  intercon- 
nections. What  the  system  was,  and  how  the 
sciences  should  be  labeled  after  they  had  adjusted 
themselves  to  this  cardinal  perception,  were  details 
which  might  come  along  in  their  turn. 

It  is  no  more  necessary  therefore  for  me  to 
defend  the  mathematical  or  mechanical  sociologies 
than  the  sentimental.  They  were  merely  inci- 
dents in  the  logical  and  psychological  maturing  of 
the  human  mind.  They  did  not  discover  the  ulti- 
mate terms  of  social  wholeness,  but  they  directed 
attention  to  the  reality  of  social  wholeness,  and 
they  thus  provoked  analysis  that  has  approached 
nearer  to  a  literal  rendering  of  the  reality. 

I  class  as  subspecies  of  the  mechanical  soci- 
ologies all  the  attempts  to  state  human  experience 
in  terms  of  geography  or  of  economics,  that  is, 
all  the  attempts  to  show  that  soil  and  climate  made 
the  Russians  Greek  Christians,  and  the  Spanish 
Roman  Christians;  all  the  attempts  to  show  that 
the  laws  of  economic  production  foreordain  the 
statute  laws  of  the  civilized  world.  Much  serious 
history  has  been  written  on  the  lines  of  this 
mechanical  sociology,  either  geographical  or  eco- 
nomic; and  British  classical  economics,  from 
Ricardo  to  the  secession  of  the  younger  Mill, 
built  its  doctrines  on  the  conception  of  the  eco- 
nomic harmonies,  which  was  merely  a  sancti- 


76        THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

monlous  rendering  of  the  more  general  mechani- 
cal version  of  life. 

The  primary  fact  in  all  this  was  that  people 
were  trying  to  make  out  the  real  connections 
between  the  confused  aspects  of  human  experi- 
ence. The  detail  that  the  first  attempts  were  not 
conclusive  is  precisely  what  should  have  been 
expected. 

I  pass  to  the  biological  sociologies.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  just  after  the  midde  of  the 
nineteenth  century  Charles  Darwin  was  a  more 
startling  appearance  in  science  than  any  comet 
has  ever  been  in  the  physical  heavens.  Beyond 
the  narrow  circle  of  men  who  were  beginning  to 
exchange  different  ideas,  and  the  lion's  share  of 
whose  merits  seems  likely  to  go,  in  the  bookkeep- 
ing of  history,  to  Darwin's  credit  alone,  the  whole 
world  still  adhered  to  the  conception  that  when  the 
Creator  of  the  universe  one  day  decided  that  his 
animal  collection  was  incomplete,  and  that  it 
would  be  well  to  add  cows,  or  dogs,  or  pigs,  he 
issued  an  amendment  to  the  constitution  of  the 
world,  "Let  there  be  cows,  or  dogs,  or  pigs,"  and 
forthwith  there  were  cows,  or  dogs,  or  pigs. 

Among  my  pamphlets  is  a  syllabus  on  anatomy 
and  physiology,  published  in  1849  for  the  college 
class  of  which  my  father  was  a  member.  There  is 
a  short  introduction  on  what  we  should  now  call 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     77 

zoology.  It  briefly  describes  the  current  fourfold 
divisions  of  animals,  viz.,  Zoophytes^  Articulates, 
Molluscs,  and  Vertebrates — but  not  a  hint  that 
these  different  forms  of  animal  structure  ever 
had  any  more  relation  to  one  another  than  chance 
specimens  of  coal  and  marble.  Then  the  sub- 
stance of  the  pamphlet  is  a  description  of  the 
human  body  under  the  chief  titles:  first,  the 
mechanical  system;  second,  the  nervous  system; 
third,  the  repairing  system;  fourth,  the  repro- 
ductive system.  On  the  whole,  the  syllabus  is  a 
clear  and  intelligible  outline  of  the  anatomical 
knowledge  of  the  time,  but  the  term  by  which 
that  type  of  knowledge  is  now  known,  gross 
anatomy,  fits  it  in  more  senses  than  one.  It  was 
merely  a  sort  of  carpenter's  specifications  of  the 
human  frame.  There  was  not  a  hint  of  the 
elementary  cellular  structure  nor  of  the  processes 
of  tissue-building. 

The  publication  of  the  Origin  of  Species  in 
1859  seems  for  a  time  to  have  totally  eclipsed 
the  memory  of  Laplace.  Of  course  mediocre 
men  did  not  hear  of  biology  for  decades,  but  all 
alert  and  far-seeing  minds  forthwith  began  to 
look  at  everything  either  literally  or  figuratively 
in  the  biological  light.  The  world  of  special 
creations  immediately  began  to  be  construed  as 
a  world  of  universal  development.     The  human 


78         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

experience  that  had  been  classified  into  groups  of 
facts  which  had  no  dealings  with  one  another 
began  to  tantalize  the  imagination  with  sugges- 
tions of  all  sorts  of  interconnections.  When  the 
biologists  began  to  circulate  those  new  terms 
morphology,  histology,  aetiology,  ecology,  etc., 
they  proved  wonderfully  stimulating  to  all  sorts 
of  imagination,  and  not  least  so  among  the  social 
scientists. 

Again  I  need  not  assume  the  role  of  attorney 
for  the  zealots  who  caught  up  the  biological  clue 
and  commandeered  it  into  the  service  of  social 
science.  They  were  hasty;  they  were  extrava- 
gant; they  often  seemed  to  mistake  pictures  for 
reality;  but  after  all  they  were  merely  stretching 
the  latest  interpretations  of  science  more  than 
they  would  bear.  Since  some  of  the  intimate 
processes  of  organic  life  had  for  the  first  time 
been  brought  to  light,  and  since  these  investi- 
gators of  social  facts  had  discovered  that  all  the 
experiences  of  men  are  knitted  together  in  most 
intimate  relations,  what  could  be  more  natural 
than  precisely  the  conclusion  which  they  drew? 
They  put  these  two  things  together :  first,  human 
relations  are  bound  together  in  marvelous  com- 
plexity; second,  biological  relations  are  bound 
together  in  marvelous  complexity.     "Aha!"  they 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     79 

said.  "What  if  these  biological  relations  should 
turn  out  to  be  the  pattern  of  human  relations?" 

Well,  the  suggestion  has  led  to  some  very 
grotesque  parodies  of  human  society,  but  for  my 
part  I  am  not  ashamed  to  say  that  I  believe  it 
served  on  the  whole  to  promote  real  social  science. 
Schaffle  in  Germany  and  Spencer  in  England — ^the 
former  an  economist  who  was  ostracized  by  his 
peers  for  going  off  into  such  fantastic  vagaries 
as  biological  versions  of  society,  but  justice  is 
beginning  to  be  done  to  his  memory  in  apprecia- 
tions by  leading  German  economists  today — these 
two  innovators,  Spencer  and  Schaffle,  set  the 
fashion,  which  held  its  own  for  a  couple  of  dec- 
ades, of  attempting  to  describe  the  interrela- 
tions in  human  society  as  though  human  society 
wxre  an  expanded  physical  organism. 

Again  all  sorts  of  fun  were  poked  at  soci- 
ology because  it  was  supposed  to  consist  in  the 
theory  that  society  is  a  big  animal,  and  in  giving 
names  borrowed  from  biology  to  the  parts  and 
activities  of  this  super-animal. 

I  was  born  into  this  biological  sociology;  I 
grew  up  in  it;  I  have  been  accused  of  perni- 
cious activity  in  helping  to  palm  it  off  on  the 
world;  and  I  hereby  utter  my  ante-mortem  state- 
ment that  I  have  nothing  whatever  to  regret  in 
my  connection  with  the  biological  sociology.     It 


8o         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

was  a  thoroughly  respectable  attempt  to  express 
the  literal  reality  of  interrelation  in  human 
society  in  the  most  vivid  terms  available.  I  do 
not  believe  we  should  have  been  as  near  as  we 
are  now  to  critical  insight  into  the  facts,  if  we 
had  not  been  schoolmastered  up  toward  critical 
insight  by  these  preliminary  analogical  repre- 
sentations. I  have  always  had  a  lively  contempt 
for  people  who  could  not  or  would  not  under- 
stand that  this  pictorial  rendering  of  society  in 
terms  of  organisms  was  merely  a  means  of 
approaching  within  seeing  distance  of  the  actu- 
ality. Never  for  a  moment  have  I  meant  any- 
thing by  the  device,  nor  have  I  understood 
anybody  else  whom  I  could  take  seriously  to 
mean  anything  by  it,  which  I  would  not  in  sub- 
stance assert  today.  I  have  simply  changed  my 
estimate  of  the  value  of  that  particular  device 
for  bringing  the  social  reality  veraciously  before 
our  minds.  I  used  to  think  it  was  a  useful  guide 
to  research.  I  now  think  it  is  of  no  use  what- 
ever for  strictly  scientific  purposes;  but  I  believe 
it  has  a  value  in  the  earlier  stages  of  sociological 
study  simply  as  a  pedagogical  recourse. 

So  much  for  these  three  attempts  at  socio- 
logical articulation:  the  sentimental,  the  mathe- 
maticaly  and  the  biological.  Each  in  its  day  was 
a  serious  effort  to  clothe  a  true  perception  in  ade- 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     8l 

quate  expression.  Each  effort  failed,  because  the 
perception  itself  had  arrived  after  all  only  at  the 
fact  that  some  sort  of  social  wholeness  existed.  It 
had  not  penetrated  into  the  real  character  of  that 
wholeness. 

This  was  the  situation  when  an  American 
writer  published  a  book  which  was  the  beginning 
of  a  movement  that  has  led  the  Germans  to  nick- 
name sociology  "the  American  science."  I  mean 
Lester  F.  Ward's  Dynamic  Sociology^  of  which 
more  in  a  moment. 

My  explanation  of  the  reason  why  the  Ger- 
mans allowed  the  Americans  to  take  the  lead  in 
formulating  sociology  is  that  German  social  sci- 
ence has  always  carried  in  solution  so  much 
of  the  assumption  of  the  interconnection  of 
all  human  experience — so  much  more  than  is  in 
French  or  English  thought — that  the  Germans 
did  not  feel  the  need  of  crystallizing  this  fluid 
sociology.  The  Germans  thought,  and  as  a  rule 
still  think,  that  an  independent  formulation  of 
this  factor  of  the  interlocking  of  all  human  expe- 
rience would  be  a  redundancy  in  science.  There 
is  also  more  excuse  for  this  position  in  Germany 
than  elsewhere  because,  with  all  their  separate- 
ness,  the  different  social  sciences  have  come 
nearer  in  Germany  than  anywhere  else  to  co- 
operation as  divisions  of  a  single  science. 


%2         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

Herbert  Spencer  was  by  far  the  most  efficient 
press  agent  for  the  general  conception  of  evolu- 
tion. Nevertheless,  as  has  been  frequently  pointed 
out,  Spencer  was  not  himself  an  evolutionist.  I 
have  no  time  to  justify  the  paradox  beyond  say- 
ing that  while  Spencer  was  popularizing  the 
notion  of  evolution  he  was  also  circulating  a 
theory  of  society  which  was  in  effect  as  fatalistic 
as  the  hyper-Calvinistic  dogma  of  foreordination. 
With  all  its  exuberance  of  biological  facts  and 
imagery,  therefore,  the  total  effect  of  Spencer's 
interpretation  of  society  was  an  invincible  impres- 
sion in  the  minds  of  those  who  accepted  it,  that 
although  society  has  been  evolved  it  is  here  to 
stay  just  as  it  is,  for  all  that  men  can  do  to 
the  contrary.  All  the  evolution  of  society  which 
Spencer  allowed  his  readers  to  get  a  glimpse 
of  had  already  been  accomplished.  At  any  rate 
nothing  that  men  could  do  could  alter  or  hasten 
anything.  Society,  in  Spencer's  version,  was 
simply  a  gigantic  organism  endowed  w4th  an 
unalterable  amount  of  energy,  and  this  energy 
would  inexorably  redistribute  itself  according  to 
laws  lodged  in  itself.  Men  were  simply  points  of 
the  emergence  of  this  energy.  They  were  victims 
of  illusions  if  they  supposed  they  were  generators 
of  new  energies  not  already  striving  for  expres- 
sion in  the  different  repositories  of  nature's  force. 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     8^ 

Spencer  would  have  disclaimed  this  rendering 
of  his  philosophy,  but  the  disclaimer  could  not  go 
beyond  the  words.  This  was  the  general  impres- 
sion made  by  his  own  language.  To  the  satisfied 
Spencerian  there  was  no  more  prospect  of  men's 
controlling  the  temper  and  policy  of  their  society, 
than  there  was  of  their  changing  another  organ- 
ism into  a  man  after  it  had  started  out,  for 
example,  to  be  a  tree. 

This  Spencerian  sociology  was  far  and  away 
the  most  influential  variation  of  social  theory  in 
the  English-speaking  world  when  Ward  pub- 
lished his  first  book  in  1883. 

Ward  was  by  profession  a  botanist.  He  spent 
his  best  years  as  curator  of  the  department  of 
paleobotany  in  the  Smithsonian  Institution.  He 
is  such  a  thoroughgoing  evolutionist  that  he  was 
understood,  by  people  who  did  not  read  him  to 
the  end,  as  a  very  crude  type  of  materialist.  In 
fact,  his  book  really  threw  down  the  gauntlet  to 
Spencer's  fatalistic  evolution  by  declaring  that 
we  have  reached  a  stage  of  purposeful  evolution. 

I  have  often  said,  and  I  freely  repeat,  that  I 
would  rather  have  written  Ward's  Dynamic  Soci- 
ology than  any  other  book  that  has  ever  been  pro- 
duced in  America.  Probably  a  great  many  other 
books  will  be  read  after  Ward's  is  forgotten, 
because — to  utter  a  paradox  of  my  own — its  main 


84         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

idea  is  commonplace  in  popular  thought,  but  it 
was  new  in  science,  namely,  that  ''psychic  forces 
are  as  real  and  natural  as  physical  forces,  .... 
and  that  they  are  the  true  causes  of  all  social 
phenomena." 

I  must  reserve  details  of  this  idea  for  later 
lectures. 

This  then  up  to  date  is  the  gist  of  the  socio- 
logical reassertion  of  the  wholeness  of  human 
experience.  The  unity  of  experience  is  a 
psychical  unity.  It  has  a  common  substratum  in 
the  physical  conditions  out  of  which  it  has 
evolved  and  by  which  it  is  limited.  But  these 
physical  conditions  are  the  fulcrum  of  the  mental, 
the  tools  and  the  materials  with  which  the  mind 
begins  its  own  further  type  of  creation,  not  the 
final  bounds  of  creation. 

In  brief,  then,  the  sort  of  unity  which  we  now 
assert  in  human  experience  relies  upon  no  analo- 
gies, upon  no  indirect  symbols.  We  say  that 
human  experience,  beyond  the  conditioning  physi- 
cal side,  is  incessant  exchange  of  mental  stimuli. 
It  is  the  carrying-on  of  that  rudimentary  process 
of  physical  evolution  which  is  underneath  the 
mental  range  of  reality,  into  uncharted  reaches  of 
spiritual  evolution,  through  the  application  of 
mental  forces  to  conscious  purposes. 

And  since  we  see  the  unity  of  experience  in 


SOCIOLOGICAL  REASSERTION  OF  UNITY     85 

this  literal  form  we  have  spontaneously  come  into 
a  new  alignment  of  the  sciences  of  this  unity. 
When  I  was  in  college,  history  and  economics  had 
no  more  dealings  with  mental  philosophy,  as  it 
was  then  called,  than  the  grocer  and  the  hatter 
and  the  hardware  dealer  had  with  one  another 
before  the  days  of  department  stores.  Today 
psychology  is  to  all  the  rest  of  the  social  sciences 
as  chemistry  is  to  biology.  It  is  the  mind's  detect- 
ive, to  pry  beneath  the  gross  anatomy  of  social 
institutions  and  movements  into  the  ultimate  men- 
tal processes  of  human  experience. 

Perhaps  this  sounds  like  a  cryptic  result  after 
all.  As  my  time  is  up,  I  shall  have  to  leave  it  in 
this  shape;  but  I  shall  try  to  show  in  the  next 
lecture  that  this  reassertion  of  the  unity  of  experi- 
ence, and  therewith  of  social  science,  for  the  first 
time  brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  literal  facts, 
and  therefore  with  the  actual  problems  of  society. 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  IN  SOCIAL 
SCIENCE 

The  first  lecture  was  devoted  to  the  proposi- 
tion that  everything  which  occurs  in  human  ex- 
perience has  some  sort  of  relation  to  everything 
else  which  occurs,  and  that  accordingly,  we  can 
have  no  science  of  human  experience  except  in 
the  degree  in  which  we  make  out  the  whole  sys- 
tem of  interrelations  given  in  the  life  of  mankind. 

The  second  lecture  expanded  the  proposition 
that  we  have  been  going  through  a  period  of 
specialization  in  social  science,  which  resulted 
in  an  excessive  degree  of  isolation  between 
artificially  segregated  divisions  of  science.  This 
separateness  had  certain  advantages,  and  it  has 
accomplished  certain  very  necessary  results.  Its 
obvious  disadvantage  was  that  it  erected  imagi- 
nary but  effective  barriers  between  divisions  of 
social  labor  which  should  intimately  communicate. 
The  results  presented  by  the  sciences  at  this  stage 
were  like  parts  of  a  machine  manufactured  in  dif- 
ferent factories,  according  to  the  ideas  of  differ- 
ent designers,  and  consequently  difficult  to  fit  to- 
gether when  they  come  to  be  assembled. 

The  third  lecture  showed  that  the  sociological 
86 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  87 

factor  in  social  science  can  be  understood  only 
when  we  give  full  faith  and  credit  to  its  central 
contention,  namely:  This  deploying  of  skir- 
mishers must  be  followed  by  a  rallying  in  force 
upon  some  center  of  operations. 

Social  science  cannot  be  many.  It  must  be 
one.  The  next  stage  of  social  science  must  be 
marked  by  a  drawing  together  of  the  parallel  or 
diverging  lines  of  research  into  which  it  has  been 
broken  up.  We  must  use  the  knowledge  which  we 
have  already  gained  of  parts  or  aspects  or  details 
of  human  experience  to  construct  a  more  adequate 
general  survey  of  the  whole  of  human  experience, 
in  order  that  we  may  intelligently  carry  on  the 
further  work  of  finding  out  more  about  human 
relations — not  merely  the  facts,  but  their  mean- 
ings— and  the  work  of  planning  the  conduct  of 
life  acordingly. 

I  tried  to  explain  that  the  claim  of  the  sociolo- 
gists to  a  hearing  did  not  rest  upon  the  particular 
conceptions  or  hypotheses  which  they  have  pro- 
posed as  total  views  of  human  experience.  I 
discussed  briefly  the  sentimental,  the  mathe- 
matical, and  the  biological  attempts  at  sociology. 
I  pointed  out  that  the  sociologists  were  less 
producers  than  products  of  types  of  thinking 
prevalent  in  the  world,  more  or  less  affecting 
all   the   sciences   of   their   time;    and    that   the 


88         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

sociologists  were  merely  making  the  best  selec- 
tions they  could  from  the  means  placed  at  their 
disposal  by  all  the  sciences  that  had  gone  be- 
fore, to  start  the  work  of  charting  life.  I  tried 
to  make  it  clear  that  sociology  today  can  no  more 
be  held  responsible  for  the  first  attempts  of  soci- 
ologists to  outline  human  experience,  than  we  are 
bound  to  join  the  party  of  the  White  Rose  or  the 
Red,  to  become  Guelph  or  Ghibelline,  if  we  assert 
that  it  is  worth  while  to  study  history.  Then  I 
added  that  sociology  has  dropped  all  sorts  of  indi- 
rect approaches  to  visualization  of  the  wholeness 
of  experience.  It  no  longer  operates  by  means  of 
analogies.  It  has  arrived  at  the  outlook  that 
human  experience  is  the  evolution  of  purposes  in 
men,  and  of  the  action  and  reaction  of  men  upon 
one  another  in  pursuit  of  these  changing  purposes 
within  conditions  which  are  set  by  the  reactions 
between  men  and  physical  nature. 

This  means  that  we  see  in  the  experience 
of  human  society  progressively  complex  inter- 
changes of  mental  influences  within  the  setting  of 
material  conditions  which  act  as  a  tether  that 
fixes  the  possible  range  of  physical  actions.  Psy- 
chology in  application  to  social  situations  accord- 
ingly becomes  the  timely  tool  of  precision  in 
discovering  the  elements  of  all  the  interrelations 
that  make  up  social  experience. 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  89 

Here  then  is  the  task  of  today's  social 
science:  To  interpret,  in  all  their  relations,  the 
visible  careers  of  men  as  expressions  of  their 
various  mental  reactions. 

Let  me  put  this  in  a  more  commonplace  way. 
Every  man  born  into  the  world  faces  the  problem : 
What  sort  of  a  place  is  this  world  anyway,  and 
how  can  we  make  the  most  out  of  it?  Not  one 
man  in  a  million  ever  reduces  his  life  problem  to 
this  general  expression;  but  if  you  could  have 
before  you  a  chart  of  all  the  actions  ever  per- 
formed by  every  man  that  has  ever  lived,  you 
would  find  this  general  question  implied  by  every 
record  which  you  could  examine.  You  would  not 
find  in  the  whole  exhibit  an  act  that  was  not 
either  some  petulant  revolt  against  a  given  lot  in 
life,  in  a  conscious  or  unconscious  attempt  to  test 
the  character  of  the  world  by  resisting  it;  or  some 
more  or  less  bold  prying  into  the  possibilities  of 
life  by  deliberate  trial  of  different  ways  of  doing 
things;  or  sleepy  acquiescence  in  the  fated  lot, 
and  submission  to  the  impression  that  the  best 
to  be  done  is  to  grin  and  bear  it  as  well  as  one 
may. 

Whether  we  are  active  or  merely  passive  occu- 
pants of, our  posts  in  life,  we  make  or  we  at  least 
accept  a  tacit  interpretation  of  our  place.  We 
therewith  adopt  a  more  or  less  restricted  program 


90         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

of  life  as  a  scheme  of  action  which  is  within  our 
range  of  possibility. 

Now  this  appraisal  of  our  lot,  and  this  fitting 
of  our  program  to  it  are  involved  in  the  life  of 
the  dullest  and  stupidest  whether  they  are  at  all 
conscious  of  it  or  not.  These  processes  are  in 
the  thoughts  by  day  and  the  dreams  by  night  of 
a  rare  few  in  every  society.  In  some  partial  form 
they  come  up  in  the  consciousness  of  all  but  the 
most  sodden,  at  certain  intervals.  In  either  case 
men  imply  or  they  bluntly  ask  this  question: 
What  sort  of  a  world  is  this  at  bottom,  and  zvhat 
is  it  worth  while  to  try  to  do  in  it? 

This  also  turns  out  to  be  the  great  question 
of  science.  It  is  the  problem  of  science  in  a  nut- 
shell. All  the  astronomies,  and  geologies,  and 
physics,  and  chemistries,  and  biologies,  and 
anthropologies,  and  histories,  and  so  on  through 
the  philosophies,  are  merely  different  ways  of 
working  out  an  answer  to  the  central  human  prob- 
lem :  Of  w^hat  sort  is  the  world  and  to  what  uses 
can  we  put  it?  Science  has  its  place  in  this  big 
mix  that  we  call  life,  as  the  agent  of  all  men  in 
getting  as  near  as  possible  tO'  an  answer  to  this 
central  question.  Science  has  other  minor  mean- 
ings, just  as  there  are  incidental  meanings 
to  food  besides  the  sustaining  of  life.  But 
the  meaning  that  would  call  for  science  in  the 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  91 

economy  of  human  life,  if  all  its  other  uses  were 
taken  away — just  as  the  life-sustaining  functions 
of  food  would  be  in  demand  if  all  its  subordinate 
uses  were  cut  off — the  primary  and  chief  function 
of  science  is  to  act  as  all  the  people's  proxy  in 
finding  out  all  that  can  be  known  about  what  sort 
of  a  world  this  is,  and  what  we  can  do  in  it  to 
make  life  most  worth  living. 

I  take  it  for  granted  that  no  argument  about 
this  proposition  is  necessary,  sO'  far  as  the  physi- 
cal sciences  are  concerned.  I  therefore  start  with 
the  blanket  reservation  that  there  is  no  possible 
phase  of  human  experience  which  is  detachable 
utterly  from  its  physical  conditions.  With  this 
reservation  in  mind,  I  am  confining  myself  to 
the  social  phases  of  science. 

By  far  the  greater  mass  of  men  do  not  con- 
sciously get  beyond  the  question:  How  can  we 
make  the  earth  furnish  the  means  of  feeding  us? 
Those  who  do  get  beyond  this  question  find 
that  it  is  but  a  step  to  the  problerh :  Supposing  we 
have  found  out  how  to  make  the  soil  furnish 
food,  how  can  we  be  sure  that  our  fellow-men 
will  let  us  eat  it?  The  two  questions  became 
involved  at  the  Cain  and  Abel  stage  of  human 
experience  and  have  been  compounding  their 
complications  ever  since. 

Assuming  that  other  people   are  constantly 


92         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

working  out  the  answer  to  the  first  question,  the 
"big  problem  of  social  science  is:  What  is  the 
character  of  that  world  which  is  made  up  of 
human  beings,  and  which  determines  our  chances 
of  eating  the  food  which  the  earth  provides? 

If  you  have  noticed  the  titles  of  my  later  lec- 
tures, you  have  seen  that  I  had  in  mind  not  the 
mere  knowledge  phase  of  science,  but  the  applica- 
tion of  knowledge  as  a  working  rule.  I  shall 
come  to  that  in  its  turn,  but  I  am  concerned  here 
with  the  center  from  which  all  scientific  opera- 
tions must  be  carried  on,  the  scientific  Greenwich 
meridian,  the  point  of  orientation  from  which  we 
may  take  reliable  bearings  throughout  the  most 
complicated  researches  in  which  we  may  find  our- 
selves involved. 

Now  the  cardinal  fact  for  social  science  to 
keep  in  view,  the  point  of  attachment  of  all  its 
different  radiations,  is  so  obvious,  it  is  so  com- 
monplace, it  is  so  matter-of-fact,  that  when  I  put 
it  into  words  you  may  think  I  am  either  trying  to 
deceive  you,  or  that  I  have  deceived  myself.  You 
do  not  want  to  be  put  off  with  platitudes.  You 
want  a  profound  scientific  principle.  I  shall  have 
to  face  your  certain  disappointment  at  what  I  have 
to  say  on  this  phase  of  the  subject.  It  will  affect 
you  as  an  entirely  empty  form  of  words.  It  is 
empty,  however,  not  because  it  is  untrue,  but 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  93 

because  it  is  in  the  class  of  those  ultimate  truths 
to  which  we  do  not  expect  to  conform  until  the 
millennium.  It  is  like  the  moral  axiom :  "Every- 
body ought  to  do  the  right  thing."  Nobody  denies 
such  a  proposition,  because  the  evidence  in  sup- 
port of  the  denial  would  be  hard  to  get;  but  few 
people  would  admit  that  such  a  commonplace  can 
do  much  to  change  things  as  they  are.  In  reality, 
human  experience  is  made  up  of  indirect  ways 
of  demonstrating  by  experience  that  so-called 
practical  affairs  are  crude  barbarities  until  they 
apply  such  moral  axioms  as  regulators  of 
conduct. 

Let  me  further  prepare  your  minds  for  the 
pivotal  platitude  which  I  shall  express  in  a  mo- 
ment, by  recalling  the  notorious  fact  that  all 
through  the  centuries  during  which  human 
thought  was  vision-mongering  before  it  began  to 
be  scientific,  its  essential  vice  was  contempt  for 
the  commonplace,  and  trapesing  off  to  something 
more  impressive.  Nobody  knows,  for  instance, 
how  many  ages  it  was  after  people  could  count 
four,  until  they  observed  that  two  and  two  always 
count  up  four.  We  have  records  of  several 
thousands  of  years  of  mythologizing  about  the 
movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  before  anyone 
was  so  vulgar  as  to  drag  orchard- wind  falls  into 
the  case,  and  to  suppose  that  there  was  anything 


94         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

in  common  between  them  and  the  orbits  of  the 
planets. 

Now  the  social  sciences  need  the  same  homily 
which  the  rustic  father  gave  his  son  when  the 
boy  was  starting  out  to  make  a  fortune  in  the 
great  world:  "If  you  ever  run  up  against  any- 
one you're  scairt  of,  John,  remember  they're 
only  jest  folks  after  all." 

The  social  sciences  are  dealing  with  "jest 
folks."  We  have  constructed  in  the  name  of 
science  imposing  systems  of  abstractions  and 
generalizations  about  human  experience.  These 
conceptions  would  lose  very  much  of  their  im- 
pressiveness,  and  on  the  whole  would  present  a 
pathetic  appeal  for  repair  and  renovation,  if 
they  were  reconsidered  by  means  of  this  test. 

The  center  of  orientation,  then,  for  the  social 
sciences,  is  the  fact  that  the  reality  which  they  are 
attempting  to  report  and  interpret  is  simply :  men 
paying  attention  to  different  objects,  men  finding 
other  men  the  most  difficult  objects  of  attention, 
men  forming  valuations  in  view  of  their  objects 
of  attention,  men  adopting  purposes  in  the  line  of 
their  valuations,  men  selecting  means  of  accom- 
plishing the  purposes,  men  applying  the  means  in 
efforts  to  realize  the  purposes,  men  passing  into 
changed  personal  equations  in  the  course  of  these 
endeavors,  men  applying  their  modified  person- 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  95 

ality  to  objects  of  attention  which  may  themselves 
meanwhile  have  remained  constant  or  in  their 
turn  may  have  been  modified;  and  so  on,  with 
altered  ratios  of  the  terms,  through  recurring 
cycles,  which  so  far  as  we  know  are  endless,  in 
which  the  element  of  central  and  final  signifi- 
cance for  our  intelligence  is  the  men,  the  co- 
operating men,  the  conflicting  men,  forever  | 
expressing  themselves,  forever  becoming  some- 
thing they  were  not,  forever  stopping  short  of 
their  promises,  forever  renewing  their  promises, 
but  in  spite  of  everything  and  because  of  every- 
thing forever  giving  all  the  value  that  we  can 
discover  to  the  whole  experience. 

Now,  this  is  either  bathos  and  bombast,  or  it 
is  the  most  fundamental  scientific  truth  abroad  in 
the  world  today.  If  numbers  settled  the  case,  it 
is  inflated  nonsense.  Of  course  these  lectures  are 
my  assertion  of  belief  that,  in  this  instance,  num- 
bers are  wrong.  My  opinion  proves  nothing 
except  that  it  is  my  opinion;  but  I  frankly  pro- 
fess the  faith  that  what  I  have  just  said  is  as 
important  for  social  science,  and  will  some  day 
prove  as  essential  for  social  science  as  the  New- 
tonian laws  are  for  the  physical  sciences.  It  is 
not  my  discovery.  One  could  wish  nothing  higher 
in  science  than  really  to  have  brought  this  truth 
to  light ;  but  it  is  in  fact  the  composite  message  of 


96         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

all  the  science  there  is  in  the  world  thus  far.  My 
pride  of  craft  makes  me  wish  I  could  claim  the 
merit  of  the  discovery  for  the  sociologists.  I  can- 
not even  do  that.  All  I  can  claim  is  that  in  com- 
mon with  many  others  the  sociologists  have  been 
picking  up  this  message  from  our  intellectual 
atmosphere ;  but  more  than  anybody  else  they  are 
trying  to  make  all  the  social  sciences  take  knowl- 
edge of  its  meaning. 

If  there  is  a  fighting  chance  that  the  sociolo- 
gists are  right,  and  if  you  men  have  not  figured 
out  what  it  would  mean  for  your  programs  in 
social  science  in  case  we  should  turn  out  to  be 
right,  it  ought  to  rouse  every  last  ounce  of  scien- 
tific spirit  there  is  in  you  to  come  up  against  the 
challenge  which  the  thesis  contains.  There  is 
more  than  a  gambler's  chance  that  my  propo- 
sition has  led  you  up  to  the  boundary  line  between 
two  epochs  in  science.  It  may  be  the  conceit  of  a 
faddist,  but  if  I  had  the  floor  in  a  congress  of 
the  foremost  scholars  of  the  world,  I  should  use 
up  my  time  arguing  the  proposition  which  I  am 
presenting  to  you  today.  I  should  declare  to 
them,  as  I  do  to  you,  that  it  is  the  surest  land- 
mark which  the  searchlights  of  all  the  sciences 
together  have  discovered.  They  would  think,  just 
as  you  do,  that  the  proposition  is  too  homely  to  be 
profound.     But  so  long  as  men  of  your  genera- 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  97 

tion  live  you  will  be  scientific  stay-at-homes,  not 
volunteers  at  the  front,  if  you  are  not  helping  to 
test  this  theorem  and  to  settle  the  issue  which  the 
sociologists  have  raised. 

I  am  not  sure  that  I  can  put  this  proposition 
concretely  enough  to  fix  the  bearing  of  this  point 
of  orientation  more  distinctly  in  your  minds,  but 
I  will  try. 

Suppose  it  were  possible  for  us  to  extract  all 
the  social  science  that  is  latent  in  the  experience 
of  England  from  the  Conquest  to  the  present 
moment.  When  reduced  to  its  lowest  terms, 
what  would  that  science  consist  of? 

If  I  have  told  you  the  truth  about  the  center 
of  orientation  in  social  science,  the  knowledge 
which  the  experience  would  yield  would  be,  in  a 
word,  an  exhibit  of  the  processes  through  which 
the  men  of  England  and  the  men  of  Normandy 
who  confronted  each  other  at  Hastings,  and  the 
masses  for  whom  they  were  proxies,  were  suc- 
ceeded by  the  very  different  men  who  are  now 
Britons.  It  would  consist  more  than  anything 
else,  first,  in  a  distinct  showing  of  the  differences, 
the  variations  in  the  personal  equations,  between 
the  earlier  men  and  the  later  men;  and  second, 
in  a  tracing  of  the  cycles  of  mental  processes 
through  which  the  one  type  of  persons  was  suc- 
ceeded by  the  other.     It  would  follow  the  clue 


98         THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

that  the  evolving  process  of  attention,  and  valua- 
tion, and  invention  of  means,  and  volition,  and 
the  reconstruction  of  the  actors  along  with  much 
reconstruction  of  the  world  which  they  acted 
upon,  is  the  central  reality  in  the  whole  experi- 
ence; while  the  more  obvious  occurrences  in 
the  experience  fall  into  the  rank  of  machin- 
eries and  incidents  relatively  incidental  to  the 
main  process.  It  would  start  with  a  manifest 
of  the  world  as  it  presented  itself  to  those 
earlier  men,  particularly  the  horizon  of  their 
relations  with  one  another,  with  the  valua- 
tions which  they  formed  with  reference  to  this 
world  of  things  and  men,  with  the  purposes  which 
they  shaped  in  connection  with  these  appraisals, 
the  acts  which  they  performed  under  the  prompt- 
ings of  the  purposes,  the  effects  which  these  ex- 
periments had  upon  the  manner  of  men  they 
were,  then  the  renewal  and  the  repetition  of  the 
cycle  of  personalization  throughout  the  course  of 
social  experience  from  the  earlier  date  to  the  later. 
Throughout  the  whole  survey,  the  ways  and  the 
degrees  in  which  the  individuals  reacted  upon  one 
another  would  constitute  the  larger  part  of  the 
process.  In  all  this  the  Englishman  that  was, 
that  was  becoming,  that  became,  and  thereupon 
gave  promise  of  becoming,  would  be  the  essence 
of  the  reality.     At  every  stage,  the  world  con- 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  99 

sisting  of  Englishmen  in  their  reactions  with  one 
another  was  remaking  and  being  remade  by  the 
personal  factors  that  composed  it ;  and  everything 
incidental  to  the  process,  which  was  not  a  phase 
of  the  personality  involved,  was  incomparably 
subsidiary  to  the  human  evolution. 

Again  we  have  to  reckon  with  variations  of 
the  two  stock  replies  to  the  sociological  argument : 
first,  "All  this  is  merely  a  blur  of  word  coloring; 
it  has  no  meaning";  second,  "This  is  precisely 
what  all  the  social  sciences  are  doing,  and  always 
have  been  going,  and  all  this  flourish  by  the  soci- 
ologists is  like  nothing  so  much  as  farmer  X's 
rooster  crowing  after  farmer  Y's  hen  has  laid 
an  egg." 

The  ignorance  of  the  former  objection  is  so 
far  beyond  help  that  I  leave  it  to  stifle  in  its 
own  smugness.  There  is  something  in  the  second 
objection;  that  is,  it  must  be  taken  seriously,  in 
order  to  bring  out  just  what  my  thesis  means,  and 
to  show  that  the  objection  lies  against  a  thor- 
oughly false  assumption  which  my  proposition 
might  imply  but  does  not. 

The  objector  of  the  second  type  who  sees  no 
force  in  the  sociological  proposition  is  inclined 
to  treat  it  as  slanderous  toward  all  the  older  social 
sciences :  "What  else  have  we  been  dealing 
with,"  he  demands,  "but  man  and  his  fortunes?" 


lOO      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

There  is  nothing  grudging  in  my  reply  that, 
apart  from  the  Httle  which  each  of  us  may  have 
learned  through  his  own  individual  experiences, 
most  of  what  we  know  about  the  life  of  men  has 
been  mediated  to  us  in  one  way  or  another  by  the 
social  sciences.  I  am  not  an  unwilling  witness 
that  all  the  ability  we  have  to  propose  problems 
of  human  relations  is  a  result  of  the  tutelage  of 
the  social  sciences.  If  that  were  the  item  in 
point,  I  could  as  gratefully  as  anybody  eulogize 
our  predecessors  in  all  the  social  sciences,  who 
have  perfected  tools  of  research  and  collected 
material  in  which  our  successors  w^ill  discover 
much  that  we  do  not  detect  about  the  human 
processes.  I  am  not  defaming  the  social  sciences, 
but  I  am  trying  to  locate  the  bigger  things  still 
to  be  done. 

What  I  mean  may  be  illustrated  by  my  own 
experience  in  connection  with  the  "classics."  It 
would  contradict  all  my  claims  about  the  value  of 
studying  human  experience  if  I  denied  that  the 
Greek  and  Roman  classics  are  worth  studying. 
The  way  in  which  I  was  compelled  to  study 
Greek  and  Latin  did  not  give  me  a  fair  chance 
to  make  the  study  worth  while.  The  claim  was, 
and  I  now  believe  the  truth  is,  that  the  Greek 
and  Latin  literatures  are  worth  study  because 
they  contain  the  thought  and  interpret  the  civili- 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  lOl 

zation  of  two  marvelously  significant  groups  of 
men.  In  my  own  case,  I  had  studied  Latin  six 
years,  and  Greek  five,  before  I  began  to  be  con- 
vinced that  those  men  had  any  thoughts,  and  it 
was  much  later  before  I  got  anything  resembHng 
a  definite  perception  that  they  had  a  civiHzation. 
There  was  certainly  some  screw  loose  between  the 
theory  and  the  application.  The  only  thoroughly 
lodged  impression  in  my  mind  was  that  those 
people,  celebrated  for  their  thought  and  their 
civilization,  really  had  nothing  but  a  grammar. 

To  the  same  effect  is  another  detail  of  my 
own  experience.  From  the  time  when  I  began 
to  talk,  I  was  taught  something  about  the  Bible 
every  day  until  I  entered  college,  and  nearly  every 
day  until  I  received  my  baccalaureate  degree.  But 
I  was  twenty-two  years  old — I  distinctly  remem- 
ber time  and  place — I  was  wandering  aimlessly 
among  the  shelves  of  a  theological  library,  when  I 
came  upon  a  book  with  the  words  upon  the  cover : 
Kuenen.  The  Religion  of  Israel;  and  for  the 
first  time  the  idea  broke  into  my  mind  that  Israel 
really  had  a  religion ! 

Whether  the  fault  was  mine  or  the  teachers' 
or  both  does  not  affect  the  point  of  the  illustra- 
tion in  the  least,  namely:  we  may  expend  the 
whole  force  of  our  minds,  and  exhaust  all  the 
technique  of  our  science  upon  material  sufficient 


I02       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

to  interpret  men,  but  in  spite  of  all,  it  may  turn 
out  that  we  have  indirectly  and  imperfectly 
studied  men.  It  may  prove  that  we  have  studied 
adumbrations  of  them  or  tangents  to  them.  We 
may  have  mistaken  some  of  the  things  they  have 
done  for  some  of  the  things  they  were.  We  may 
have  become  so  much  interested  in  men's  gram- 
mars or  their  scriptures  that  we  have  overlooked 
the  makers  of  grammar  and  scripture. 

Let  me  still  further  guard  myself  against  the 
suspicion  that  I  am  belittling  what  the  social 
sciences  have  done.  If  I  did  not  know  how  to 
admire  the  labors  of  scholars  in  all  the  social  sci- 
ences, and  if  I  did  not  know  that  the  value  of  that 
which  they  have  accomplished  and  are  accom- 
plishing is  beyond  all  computation,  I  should  cer- 
tainly be  unfit  to  discuss  the  task  that  remains.  I 
am  not  engaged  in  depreciating  the  work  of  past 
scholars,  nor  of  denying  the  importance  of  the 
work  of  present  scholars.  My  concern  is  with 
the  plans  of  scholars  for  the  future.  Are  you 
going  to  be  content  with  the  social  sciences  in 
their  present  shape?  Are  you  going  to  assume 
that  they  are  as  far-looking  and  as  penetrating 
as  they  may  be?  Are  you  going  to  assist  in 
turning  the  technical  departmental  lines  between 
types  of  social  science  into  caste  divisions?  Are 
you  going  to  throw  your  influence  on  the  side  of 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  103 

developing  a  petty  sectarianism  in  science,  or  are 
you  for  aiming  at  a  convergence  of  all  our  scien- 
tific technique  in  multifocal  vision  upon  the  com- 
mon object? 

I  believe  your  decision  will  turn  solely  on  the 
question  v^hether  the  issue  can  be  put  before  you 
so  that  you  can  plainly  see  the  two  horns  of  the 
dilemma.  I  should  have  to  be  a  pessimist  if  I 
doubted  your  choice  when  you  are  once  within 
sight  of  the  alternatives.  For  that  reason  I  am 
urging  that,  with  all  respect  for  past  achievements 
and  for  present  efforts,  the  outstanding  business 
of  the  social  sciences  is  to  accomplish  such  a  read- 
justment of  their  various  perspectives,  with  refer- 
ence to  the  central  point  of  orientation,  that  they 
will  clarify  instead  of  confusing  one  another. 

But  this  is  a  digression.  I  was  replying  to 
the  claim  that  the  social  sciences  have  always 
been  studying  men  and  nothing  but  men,  and  that 
it  is  ridiculous  for  sociologists  at  this  late  day  to 
preen  themselves  over  the  pretense  of  newness  in 
their  dictum  that  we  need  to  study  men. 

To  this  claim  that  there  is  no  call  for  my 
assertion  I  answer  that  it  would  presently  ad- 
vance our  social  science  by  leaps  and  bounds  if  the 
scholars  who  now,  once  a  year,  split  themselves 
up  into  little  mutual  admiration  societies  would 
meet  together  and  conscientiously  thresh  out  the 


I04       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

question  whether  they  really  intend  to  supplement 
one  another  in  connected  research;  whether  they 
really  are  combining  their  efforts  upon  a  com- 
mon object ;  whether  their  common  interest  really 
is  the  past,  present,  and  future  development  of 
men,  or  something  else  which  they  have  some  way 
of  placing  at  the  center  of  attention.  The  most 
dynamic  doctrine  that  could  be  uttered  in  such  a 
company  would  be  the  proposition  that  the  social 
sciences  are  missing  their  calling  by  groping 
around  among  the  penumbras  of  men  instead  of 
fixing  their  attention  on  men  themselves. 

I  will  make  another  attempt  to  say  this  more 
concretely. 

What  do  we  do  when  we  study  political  sci- 
ence? Do  we  study  men  directly,  as  they  are  in 
reality  ?  Let  us  see.  Suppose  we  start  under  the 
guidance  of  the  anonymous  scholar  who  gives  the 
Century  Dictionary  one  of  its  definitions  of  politi- 
cal science.  He  says  that  it  is  "the  science  of 
government."  Now  this  sounds  very  plain,  very 
plausible,  and  very  innocent.  It  is,  as  our  science 
goes.  I  am  not  arguing  that  one  social  science  is 
more  at  fault  than  another.  I  am  calling  attention 
to  one  of  the  apparently  inevitable  workings  of 
our  minds  when  we  are  operating  the  scientific 
processes  of  abstraction  and  analysis.  The  conclu- 
sion toward  which  I  am  arguing  is  not  that  these 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  105 

processes  should  be  abandoned.  We  surely  have 
nothing  to  take  their  place.  My  argument  is  that 
these  processes  must  be  reinforced  by  the  process 
of  synthesis,  which  shall  organize  all  the  partial 
results  that  abstraction  and  analysis  reach.  This 
synthesis  must  put  together  all  the  phases 
abstracted  and  the  details  analyzed  and  the  rela- 
tions generalized.  It  will  not  give  us  science,  or 
knowledge  of  the  whole  object  as  it  is,  unless  it 
reconstructs  all  these  aspects  of  the  object  and  its 
relations  so  that  they  appear  in  the  same  work- 
ing connection  which  they  have  in  reality. 

Now,  to  go  on  with  my  illustration  from 
political  science.  Do  you  not  see  that  when  you 
propose  to  yourselves  the  subject  "government," 
you  deflect  your  attention  from  the  real  center, 
namely,  the  men  governing  and  the  men  governed, 
somewhat  as  you  throw  the  family  living  in  a 
house  out  of  your  direct  field  of  vision  when  you 
get  absorbed  in  the  architecture  of  that  house  as 
a  problem  of  domestic  science?  What  happens 
when  we  devote  ourselves  as  specialists  to  one 
of  these  abstractions,  such  as  government  ?  Well, 
that  depends  on  a  great  many  things;  but  in 
some  degree  and  in  some  form  this  happens  to 
every  one  of  us.  We  credit  a  separate  existence 
to  the  notions  which  go  into  the  abstraction.  We 
tend  to  think  of  that  existence  as  though  some- 


lo6       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

thing  identical  with  the  picture  in  our  minds 
had  a  being  outside  of  our  minds.  We  are 
inclined  to  think  of  government  as  an  incorporeal 
institution  permeating  the  spaces  between  us,  or 
hovering  like  a  cloud  above  us.  When  w^e  stop 
to  think  of  it,  we  know  that  what  we  have  to  deal 
with  under  this  term  "government"  is  men  con- 
trolling themselves  and  controlling  one  another 
and  controlled  by  one  another,  and  pushing  and 
pulling  every  which  way  to  change  the  balance 
of  control.  We  know  too  that  the  things  of  most 
human  interest,  and  so  most  needed  in  the 
knowledge  properly  to  be  dignified  as  the  sci- 
ence of  government,  would  begin  w^ith  answers 
to  the  question.  Why  do  men  w^ant  to  control 
themselves  and  one  another?  The  hotter  we  get 
on  the  trail  of  the  answers  to  this  question  the 
more  we  turn  our  backs  on  the  artificial  abstrac- 
tion "government,"  and  the  closer  we  find  our- 
selves to  the  plain  men  who  are  doing  all  that  is 
being  done.  We  find  that  because  men  are  men 
they  do  not  live  unto  themselves  alone,  but  they 
are  what  they  are  by  mixing  with  other  men. 
Then  come  trials  of  different  kinds  of  strength 
between  them.  Whatever  strength  of  body  they 
have,  and  whatever  ability  to  command  physical 
means  outside  of  their  bodies,  and  whatever  influ- 
ences they  can  exert  upon  one  another,   from 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  107 

force  to  love,  are  put  at  the  service  of  their  vari- 
ous wants,  as  far  as  possible  to  secure  the  supply 
of  those  wants  for  the  most  self-assertive,  with 
such  provision  as  may  then  remain  for  the 
less  assertive.  But  these  adjustments  between 
the  more  and  the  less  self-assertive  are  not 
simple  matters.  These  very  self-assertions  are 
again  expressions  of  the  men.  In  these  self- 
assertions  the  men  show  their  make-up.  They 
do  not  assert  the  same  force,  in  kind  any  more 
than  in  degree.  One  man's  force  would  have 
to  be  expressed  chiefly  in  terms  of  hunger, 
another's  perhaps  in  terms  of  superstition,  anoth- 
er's in  terms  of  vanity,  another's  in  terms  of  curi- 
osity, and  still  another's  in  the  spirit  of  team-play 
with  his  fellows.  However  the  units  concerned 
in  the  particular  case  may  be  composed,  they  pit 
themselves  against  one  another  in  smaller  or 
larger  groups  in  a  unique  competition  for  exist- 
ence and  for  prevalence.  Without  carrying  the 
illustration  into  greater  detail,  it  is  evident  that 
the  deeper  we  get  into  the  literal  processes  which 
we  bring  to  light  when  we  begin  to  investigate 
the  full  phenomena  of  social  control,  the  more 
does  the  conception  "government"  become  inade- 
quate for  purposes  of  precision;  and  the  more 
are  we  forced  back  upon  the  homely  fact  of  the 


lo8       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

make-up  of  men  and  their  incessant  strivings  for 
mastery. 

This  was  virtually  the  point  of  Professor 
Paul  Reinsch's  address  to  the  Association  of 
Historical  Teachers  a  few  weeks  ago.  And  this 
leads  me  to  repeat  that  the  sociologists  are  no 
longer  voices  crying  in  the  wilderness.  In  every 
one  of  the  social  sciences  there  are  influential 
scholars  who  are  saying  the  same  thing  which 
the  sociologists  say.  They  are  heading  the  move- 
ment in  their  respective  sciences  for  concentra- 
tion around  the  normal  human  center. 

I  might  illustrate  further  by  going  into  the 
history  of  that  particular  concept  of  political  sci- 
ence, "sovereignty."  This  abstraction  has  served 
many  purposes,  but  every  political  scientist  is 
aware  today  that  it  came  to  be  an  opaque  body 
between  men  and  the  meaning  of  their  own 
actions.  It  is  true  in  the  rough,  for  example, 
that  American  political  theories  from  1775  to 
1875  treated  the  idea  of  "sovereignty"  as  though 
it  were  an  independent  force  as  external  to 
human  wills  as  the  phenomena  of  gravitation. 
Just  as  long  and  as  far  as  that  impression  affecfts 
our  minds,  our  attention  is  drawn  aside  from 
men  as  our  center  to  some  unreality  constructed 
in  the  place  of  men.  What  then  is  the  truth 
about  "sovereignty"?    Why,  the  word  is  merely 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  109 

an  abstract  substitute  for  the  men  by  whom,  in 
a  given  case,  other  men  consent  to  be  ruled,  and 
for  the  terms  under  which  the  rule  is  accepted. 
''Sovereignty"  is  merely  a  general  symbol  for 
certain  of  the  more  or  less  temporary  adjust- 
ments which  men  make  with  one  another. 

The  same  thing  is  more  easily  seen  in  the 
case  of  political  economy.  I  will  not  assume 
the  responsibility  of  deciding  the  question  of 
fact,  as  to  how  far  any  individual  economist  has 
gone  in  the  way  of  disregarding  men  and  cutting 
his  lines  of  communication  with  that  orienting 
base  by  turning  his  attention  to  wealth.  I  know 
for  instance  that  German  political  economy  never 
fully  consented  to  that  aberration.  I  know  that 
since  1872  the  German  economic  theorists  have 
successfully  maintained  that  political  economy 
must  be  a  knowledge  of  men  for  the  service  of 
men.  I  know  that  the  angle  of  vision  in  English 
economics  has  greatly  changed  since  Marshall  in 
1892  defined  economics  as  ''the  study  of  men's 
actions  in  the  ordinary  business  of  life,"  and  then 
added:  "Thus,  it  is  on  one  side  a  study  of 
wealth,  and  on  the  other  and  more  important 
side,  a  part  of  the  study  of  man." 

This  is  all  to  the  good,  and  it  again  illustrates 
the  statement  that  the  sociologists  are  not  utter- 
ing outre  ideas.    They  are  simply  urging  that  the 


no       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

full  implications  of  ideas  which  have  found  voice 
in  all  the  social  sciences  shall  be  respected.  I 
know  that  English  and  American  economists 
have  advanced  even  upon  Marshall's  formulation 
of  their  problem.  I  am  not  undertaking,  there- 
fore, in  this  summary  review,  to  decide  how  much 
any  individual's  vision  might  actually  have  been 
deflected  from  the  perspective  which  has  men 
as  its  vanishing-point.  I  simply  point  out  that  in 
so  far  as  you  are  drawing  wealth  into  the  center 
of  your  field  of  vision  you  are  by  just  so  much 
turning  your  gaze  away  from  men  as  your  center 
of  vision.  More  than  this,  when  you  adjust  your 
vision  to  the  abstraction  "men's  actions  in  con- 
nection with  wealth,"  no  matter  how  you  define 
the  abstraction,  you  are  looking  at  the  reflection 
of  men  in  a  convex  mirror.  You  do  not  study 
them  in  the  most  objective  moving  picture  which 
organizes  all  men's  actions. 

For  instance,  inspect  the  workings  of  that 
partly  legal,  partly  economic  concept,  "property." 
It  has  been  used  over  and  over  again,  both  in 
pure  theory  and  in  the  discussion  of  practical 
politics,  as  though  it  were  one  of  the  unalterable 
factors  in  the  nature  of  things.  By  taking  the 
concept  "property"  as  an  eternal  datum  in  science 
we  have  allowed  ourselves  to  be  blocked  off  from 
the  sort  of  inspection  of  men  themselves  which 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  III 

discloses  what  "property"  means.  It  turns  out 
that  the  activities  which  really  exist  where  we 
have  set  up  the  entity  "property"  constitute 
another  type  of  process  which  men  are  carrying 
on  with  incessant  variation.  "Property"  is  really 
a  collective  name  applied  for  convenience  to  the 
infinite  variety  of  ways  in  which  we  agree  to 
render  aid  to  one  another  in  holding  on  to 
things  that  we  have  acquired  or  in  acquiring 
more  things.  Property  is  not  an  attribute  of 
nature,  it  is  a  mode  of  men's  actions. 

I  may  say  the  same  thing  in  terms  of  his- 
tory. When  E.  A.  Freeman  coined  the  aphorism, 
"History  is  past  politics,  politics  is  present  his- 
tory," he  seemed  to  be  saying  something  very 
much  to  the  point.  In  a  way  he  was,  but  a  little 
reflection  shows  that  the  assertion  is  inaccurate  in 
one  way,  because  history  is  much  more  than  past 
politics,  and  politics  is  much  less  than  present  his- 
tory ;  and  it  is  inaccurate  in  another  way,  because 
it  sets  up  some  sort  of  a  conventionalized  picture 
under  the  term  "politics"  in  place  of  the  reahty 
of  men  in  all  their  involved  ways  of  acting, 

1  will  not  raise  the  question  whether  we  are 
likely  forever  to  speak  of  history  at  all  as  one 
science,  or  whether  we  shall  refer  to  the  his- 
torical aspects  of  all  experience,  and  shall  make 
requisitions  upon  historiography  in  all  social  in- 


112       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

vestigation.  The  fact  is  that,  however  we  define 
or  describe  it,  historical  vision  is  always  con- 
cerned with  real  men  acting;  and  the  vision 
is  blurred  whenever  we  permit  summarized 
abstractions  to  obtrude  themselves  between  us 
and  the  men. 

If  I  could  do  so  without  going  too  far  into 
technicalities,  I  should  illustrate  again  in  the  case 
of  the  psychologists  and  their  abstraction  "con- 
sciousness." I  should  urge  that  it  is  quite  possible 
to  change  the  focus  so  much  that  men  acting  will 
pass  out  of  the  range  of  vision,  and  there  will 
be  left  a  supposititious  something  which  consists 
of  mental  operations  viewed  in  a  vacuum  bounded 
by  a  fictitious  subjectivity  and  insulated  from  the 
objective  processes  of  men's  life. 

As  a  last  illustration,  sociology^  has  furnished 
and  is  still  furnishing  a  notorious  instance  of 
the  same  mistake.  In  groping  after  our  center 
of  orientation  we  have  had  recourse  to  the 
abstraction  "society."  Thereupon  the  sociolo- 
gists have  proceeded  to  give  pitiful  exhibitions  of 
themselves  committing  the  very  blunders  which 
they  had  observed  in  others  and  which  they  are 
trying  to  persuade  others  to  avoid.  We  have 
naively  furnished  our  quota  of  evidence  that, 
indispensable  as  it  is  in  science,  the  process  of 
abstraction  is  dangerous.    Instead  of  keeping  real 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  113 

men  successfully  in  sight,  we  have  summarized 
them  in  this  artificial  conception  ^'society,"  and 
then  we  have  gone  on  elaborating  the  abstrac- 
tion in  countless  unreal  ways.  I  referred  to 
samples  of  them  in  the  last  lecture. 

What  is  the  reality  which  we  get  a  slanting 
view  of  in  the  concept  "society"?  Why,  it  is 
men  associating.  The  thing  to  find  out  is,  why 
men  associate,  and  how  they  associate,  and  by 
what  means  they  associate,  and  why  and  how 
and  by  what  means  they  vary  their  associations. 
This  conception  of  the  problem  brings  us  again 
to  the  perception  that  men's  associatings  are  not 
phenomena  which  have  a  transcendental  exist- 
ence. They  are  only  certain  external  phases  of 
men's  actions  in  their  whole  personality.  They 
are  the  outward  form  of  men's  essential  reality, 
in  their  total  experience  of  arriving  at  valuations, 
and  clutching  at  straws  to  save  what  seems  to 
them  worth  saving,  or  inventing  institutions  to 
accomplish  what  seems  to  them  worth  achieving. 

People  who  are  captious,  who  are  zealous 
for  some  view  which  all  this  impeaches,  who  are 
not  dead  in  earnest  about  making  science  the 
purest  possible  vicarious  sacrifice  for  progressive 
enlightenment  of  all  men,  may  easily  persuade 
themselves  that  what  I  have  been  saying  is 
nothing    but    finicky    fussing  with  words.     Men 


114       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

who  have  been  trying  as  long  as  I  have  to  save 
the  world  by  the  fooHshness  of  sociological 
preaching  have  learned  to  chuckle  over  that 
brand  of  evasion  and  to  bide  their  time.  My 
own  estimate  is  that  we  have  been  getting  a 
hearing  more  rapidly  than  it  was  reasonable  to 
expect.  The  men  who  really  believe  they  can 
afford  to  treat  the  sociological  argument  con- 
temptuously are  growing  less  influential  every 
day.  At  the  same  time  men  of  prominence  in 
every  branch  of  science  are  conceding  that  we 
have  established  our  standing  in  court,  although 
they  may  not  admit  that  we  have  a  strong  case. 

I  may  sum  up  the  sociological  argument,  so 
far  as  I  have  presented  it,  in  a  very  simple  way: 

The  common  object  of  social  science  is  men 
acting.  At  present  the  older  social  sciences  more 
than  the  sociologists  are  seduced  by  the  witchery 
of  words.  They  think  they  are  still  dealing  with 
men  acting,  when  they  are  becoming  fascinated 
by  abstractions  from  men  symbolized  in  preten- 
tious general  terms.  The  consequence  is  that 
they  really  substitute  a  make-believe  world,  an 
apocryphal  world,  for  the  human  world. 

The  corrective  of  falsifying  abstraction  is  ori- 
entation upon  the  real  object.  The  central  ques- 
tions for  social  science  are :  What  have  men  done 
and  how  and  why,  and  what  light  does  this  expe- 


THE  CENTER  OF  ORIENTATION  II 5 

rience  throw  upon  what  remains  to  be  done,  and 
how  to  do  it? 

To  answer  these  questions  the  apparatus  of 
all  the  social  sciences  will  be  required.  Our 
answers  will  be  reliable  in  the  degree  in  which  we 
learn  to  use  all  the  apparatus  by  co-operative 
methods  in  the  common  labor  of  the  social  sci- 
ences. The  central  task  of  social  science  is  to 
understand  past  and  present  men,  and  to  derive 
from  this  knowledge  valuations  of  both  ends  and 
means  for  the  use  of  the  men  we  shall  be 
tomorrow.^ 

*  When  I  followed  familiar  usage  and  spoke  of  the  twenty- 
four  "factors"  in  the  experience  of  the  Germans  (vide  p.  16), 
that  form  of  expression  illustrated  the  very  tendency  against 
which  this  lecture  has  warned,  viz.,  to  substitute  impersonal 
concepts  for  men  when  we  attempt  to  report  human  relations. 
The  inexact  expression  "factors"  is  of  course  a  crude  way  of 
referring  to  men  who  had  assembled  results  of  their  experi- 
ence in  conceptions  and  valuations  scheduled  1—24.  The 
alleged  "factors"  were  literally  men  affirming  these  concep- 
tions in  their  activities. 


LECTURE  V 

THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  AS  TERMS  IN   ONE 
FORMULA 

I  have  now  called  your  attention  to  four 
phases  of  the  situation  with  which  social  science 
has  to  reckon:  first,  the  phase  which  I  have  re- 
ferred to  in  variations  of  the  concept  "the 
wholeness  of  human  experience" — the  fact  that 
everything  which  now  is  in  human  experience  has 
some  kind  and  degree  of  relation  with  everything 
else  that  has  been  and  is  and  is  to  be.  This  fact 
implies  that  science  which  purports  to  be  knowl- 
edge of  human  experience  confronts  the  task  of 
composing  itself  so  that  it  will  truly  reflect  this 
wholeness  of  the  reality.  Secondly,  I  have  de- 
scribed the  phase  of  attempted  independence  and 
self-sufficiency  of  sciences,  which  became  acute 
as  an  incident  of  scientific  specialization  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  Thirdly,  I  have  told  of 
the  attempts  of  the  sociologists  to  convince  the 
other  social  scientists  that  the  time  is  ripe  for 
more  effective  scientific  co-operation  and  centrali- 
zation in  accordance  with  the  indications  of  the 
whole  experience  to  be  investigated.  Fourthly, 
I  have  argued  that  the  reality  which  all  science 
has  to  interpret  is  men  acting  upon  one  another 
ii6 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  I17 

within  physical  conditions.  Hence  the  program 
of  conforming  science  to  reality  must  constantly 
correct  itself  by  reference  to  the  activities  of  real 
men  as  the  center  of  orientation. 

As  a  caption  for  the  present  lecture,  I  have 
used  the  mathematical  or  the  chemical  manner: 
"The  Social  Sciences  as  Terms  in  One  Formula." 
Before  I  discuss  the  formula  itself,  I  will  try  to 
give  a  general  idea  of  what  I  have  in  mind  in 
using  that  mode  of  expression. 

All  that  I  have  said  so  far  in  these  lectures 
has  implied,  and  I  have  intended  it  to  imply,  that 
complete  social  science,  if  it  were  possible,  would 
find  a  place  for  everything  in  human  experience 
and  would  set  everything  in  order  in  its  place. 
I  presume  that  every  social  scientist  of  whatever 
specialty,  and  whatever  his  particular  view  of 
actual  or  desirable  relations  between  divisions 
of  labor  in  social  science,  thinks  of  such  an  out- 
come as  the  ideal  aim  of  science,  quite  aside  from 
opinions  about  human  ability  to  approach  very 
near  to  that  goal.  I  suspect  that  each  of  us  has 
a  mental  reservation  to  the  effect  that  his  own 
science,  as  it  now  stands  and  as  he  is  helping  to 
make  it,  will  fit  bodily  into  the  whole  scheme  of 
knowledge.  If  we  did  not  assume  this  we  should 
be  less  at  ease  in  our  various  academic  Zions,  and 


Il8       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

less  able  to  ignore  the  whole  methodological 
question. 

But  in  spite  of  this  comfortable  assurance 
the  habit  is  growing,  both  on  the  lay  public  that 
looks  to  scholars  for  the  solution  of  scientific 
problems  and  on  the  scholars  themselves,  of  put- 
ting questions  in  a  way  that  plays  hob  with  the 
beautifully  precise  old  statical  division  lines  be- 
tween sciences.  Neither  layman  nor  scholar  any 
longer  asks  as  exclusively  as  he  used  to,  ''What 
aspects  of  things  does  this  or  that  science  con- 
sider?" Both  laymen  and  scholars  are  asking 
more  often  and  more  seriously:  "What  has 
been  going  on  in  the  world,  and  what  is  going 
on,  and  what  does  it  all  mean  for  men  today?" 

We  have  recently  had  an  instructive  illus- 
tration of  this  modern  attitude  among  the 
physical  scientists  in  our  own  university.  Sev- 
eral years  ago  one  of  our  geologists  found  him- 
self asking  the  question,  What  occurred  as  causes 
of  a  situation  presented  by  the  rock  formations 
in  a  certain  locality  ?  In  running  down  the  clues 
to  what  occurred  that  geologist  found  himself 
facing  the  dilemma  of  disregarding  all  the  con- 
ventions of  categorical  science  or  calling  off  his 
search.  He  was  already  as  far  off  his  scientific 
preserve  as  he  could  conveniently  get.  Starting 
with  the  crust  of  the  earth  and  the  processes  of 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  119 

its  formation,  he  noted  that  he  was  probably 
deahng  with  the  same  processes  which  had  trans- 
formed the  original  star-dust  into  our  visible 
sidereal  system;  the  same  processes  which  are 
now  constructing  the  most  distant  nebulae  into 
w^orlds.  He  saw  that  he  could  find  out  exactly 
what  these  processes  were  only  with  the  help  of 
difficult  mathematical  calculations.  He  saw  fur- 
ther that  the  forces  at  work  were  also  chemical, 
and  that  the  share  of  these  chemical  processes  in 
the  actual  procedure  was  an  important  factor  in 
the  complete  explanation.  The  upshot  was  that 
the  ancient  ritual  of  scientific  propriety  received 
a  ruthless  shock.  Regardless  of  the  definitions 
of  their  respective  fields,  geologist,  astronomer, 
mathematician,  and  chemist  presently  had  their 
coats  off  and  were  working  together  to  solve  a 
real  problem.  The  complete  success  of  their  in- 
quiry would  register  itself  in  some  sort  of 
statement  distantly  resembling  a  formula  in 
mathematics  or  chemistry.  That  is,  such  and 
such  quantities  of  this  force,  and  such  and  such 
of  that,  and  such  and  such  of  the  other,  applied 
under  such  and  such  conditions,  gave  the  forma- 
tion in  question.  The  result  would  be  neither 
pure  mathematics,  nor  pure  chemistry,  nor  pure 
astronomy,  nor  pure  geology,  in  any  archaic, 
separatistic,    schematic    sense.      It   would   be    a 


I20      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

realistic  formula  of  the  quantities  and  modes  of 
the  participation  of  the  different  factors  in  the 
actual  occurrence. 

I  cannot  imagine  a  more  vivid  object-lesson 
in  the  spirit  of  modern  science.  The  same  spirit, 
not  yet  as  sure  of  itself,  is  steadily  making  its 
way  on  the  social  side,  and  it  is  this  spirit  for 
which  the  sociologists  have  volunteered  to  speak. 
The  general  position  amounts  to  this:  Experi- 
ence is  a  reality  to  be  expressed  by  a  formula, 
the  terms  of  which  would  have  to  get  their  valu- 
ations through  the  co-operation  of  all  the 
processes  at  our  command  for  discovering 
knowledge.  The  combination  of  the  terms  so 
evaluated,  assuming  that  the  work  could  be  made 
precise,  would  give  a  true  equation  in  the  form : 

The  given  experience  =  (?«?)  {?v'^)  {?w^)  {? x^)  (?y?)  (.?0?) 
(?n^) 

The  task  of  social  science  as  a  whole  is  to 
ascertain  how  to  discover  the  values  of  the  un- 
known quantities,  together  with  the  values  of 
their  coefficients  and  exponents,  throughout  the 
whole  range  of  observable  human  experience  and 
particularly  in  present  situations. 

The  sociologist  had  found  that  scholars  held 
completely  contradictory  opinions  about  the  fun- 
damental   question   whether   anything   remotely 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  12 1 

resembling  such  a  formula  or  capable  of  serving 
as  an  approximation  to  it  is  attainable. 

On  the  one  hand  men  say :  ''We  cannot  get 
a  unified  explanation  of  human  experience.  No 
such  explanation  is  possible.  All  that  we  can 
reach  is  connected  views  of  certain  aspects  of 
experience.  We  can  have  sciences  of  these 
several  abstracted  relations,  but  we  cannot  have 
a  science  of  the  interactions  of  these  relations." 

On  the  other  hand  other  men  say :  ''Science 
is  a  relative  term  at  best.  It  does  not  mean 
omniscience  even  about  a  single  subject.  If  it 
did  we  should  have  to  stop  talking  about  science 
altogether.  There  is  no  provision  for  such  a 
thing  in  this  world.  Science  is  knowledge  sys- 
tematized to  the  best  of  human  power  and  con- 
nected up  part  with  part  to  the  extent  of  human 
ability.  In  its  very  essence  knowledge  is  a 
recognition  of  relations.  Draw  a  dead-line 
through  relations  that  actually  exist,  and  say  to 
different  groups  of  scholars,  'You  must  stop 
here,  you  may  not  pass  the  dead-line,'  and  you 
doom  knowledge  to  the  rank  of  nescience.  You 
turn  it  into  obscuration.  So  long  as  we  do  not 
know  that  the  thing  we  study  has  relations  out- 
side the  range  of  our  search,  we  may  flatter  our- 
selves that  we  can  have  a  science  of  it  without 
reference  to  anything  beyond.     The  moment  we 


\. 


122       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

discover  that  relations  connect  the  object  with 
anything  further,  there  is  nothing  to  do  but  to 
hold  our  supposed  science  in  suspension,  till  we 
find  out  how  much  that  seems  to  be  true  at  the 
near  end  of  these  relations  is  modified  by  follow- 
ing along  toward  the  far  end  of  the  relations. 
That  is,  you  cannot  have  a  science  of  an  abstrac- 
tion. You  can  have  only  fore-studies  of  those 
phases  or  aspects  of  the  whole  which  the  abstrac- 
tion reflects.  Science  is  an  accounting  for  all 
the  relations  which  put  in  an  appearance  when 
we  try  to  get  knowledge.  We  can  no  longer 
hypnotize  ourselves  with  the  notion  that  we  can 
construct  science  by  arbitrarily  ruling  out  types 
of  relations  which  it  is  inconvenient  to  consider." 
Between  these  extreme  views  every  scholar 
must  find  himself.  There  is  something  to  be 
said  for  both  extremes.  As  far  back  as  we  can 
go  in  the  history  of  thought  we  find  that  some- 
thing was  all  the  time  being  said  for  both.  In 
spite  of  the  attempts  at  comprehensive  philosophy 
all  the  way  along,  my  impression  is  that  the 
former  view  has  held  more  of  the  ground  and  a 
larger  part  of  the  time  than  the  latter.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  we  are  now  swinging  into  a 
scientific  era  in  which  we  shall  give  ourselves 
fewer  airs  about  the  type  of  knowledge  which 
becomes   impressive   by   arbitrarily  limiting   its 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  123 

outlook.  We  want  exact  knowledge  whenever 
we  can  get  it,  but  we  are  growing  impatient  with 
kinds  of  knowledge  which  may  be  made  to  seem 
complete  in  themselves  by  ruling  out  of  consid- 
eration the  connections  with  other  things  which 
contradict  such  completeness. 

The  movement  on  the  social  side  may  be 
illustrated  in  this  way:  If  I  were  called  upon 
to  mention  the  ten  most  influential  books  ever 
written  in  political  science,  I  should  feel  quite 
safe  in  naming  to  any  competent  committee  of 
award  as  one  of  the  titles  in  such  list  Montes- 
quieu's Spirit  of  the  Laws,  published  in  1748. 
That  work  repays  careful  reading  today  by  any- 
one wise  enough  to  read  it  understandingly ;  yet 
it  is  not  a  textbook  from  which  we  can  learn  the 
sort  of  political  science  taught  now.  It  gives  us 
an  impression  of  law  as  something  which  has  a 
self-existent  being  transcending  men.  Probably 
more  because  of  that  fact  than  in  spite  of  it,  the 
workings  of  law  as  exhibited  in  the  book  seem 
awe  inspiring.  They  have  a  certain  resemblance 
to  reality,  but  they  are  not  reality.  Today  we 
want  to  know  how  men  get  into  office,  just  why 
they  want  to  be  there,  what  the  inside  meaning  is 
of  the  acts  they  perform  when  there,  how  legis- 
lative bills  are  framed,  who  starts  them,  by  what 
combinations  of  influences  they  are  enacted  or  re- 


124       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

jected,  what  laws  are  enforced  and  why,  what 
laws  are  dead  letters  and  why,  etc.  But  at  the 
same  time  we  want  to  get  this  information  fitted 
into  place  with  all  the  other  classes  of  informa- 
tion that  give  us  a  general  chart  of  the  kind  of 
program  which  all  sorts  of  men  in  our  day  are 
following.  We  have  less  use  for  large  generali- 
zations that  are  like  graven  images  of  symbolic 
society,  and  more  use  for  views  of  men  as  they 
are  in  real  life,  even  if  the  views  lend  themselves 
to  less  rigid  statements  than  more  artistically 
contrived  symbols. 

Or  let  us  take  as  another  illustration  the 
abstraction  *'the  economic  man."  For  the  larger 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century  this  conception  was 
one  of  the  most  dependable  tools  that  pseudo- 
science  ever  employed.  But  that  is  an  altogether 
too  familiar  way  of  speaking  of  it.  I  should 
rather  say  it  had  the  power  and  the  precision  of  a 
Roman  legion  in  attack  or  defense.  But  again 
the  abstraction  is  such  a  thin  section  of  life  that 
we  rate  it  today  as  an  equally  thin  section  of 
science.  The  conception  of  "the  economic  man," 
a  human  calculating  machine  operated  solely  by 
the  impulse  of  material  gain,  misinterprets  high 
and  low  in  actual  affairs  as  grotesquely  as 
Opper's  caricatures  misrepresent  both  the  mag- 
nates and  the  plain  people.    When  Mr.  Morgan 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  125 

leaves  Wall  Street  and  for  a  fortnight  personally 
conducts  a  train  load  of  clerical  guests  to  and 
from  a  religious  convention  on  the  Pacific  Coast, 
or  when  he  scours  Europe  for  art  treasures,  he  is 
not  "the  economic  man" ;  and  for  one  I  very- 
much  doubt  if  he  is  in  his  private  office  during 
business  hours.  When  the  neighbors  in  the 
slums  share  their  dinners  with  poorer  neighbors, 
they  are  not  "the  economic  man."  We  get  nearer 
to  men  as  they  are  today  by  tracing  their  actions 
back  to  the  real  mixtures  of  valuations  and  pur- 
poses that  impel  them,  even  though  that  account 
of  their  actions  refuses  to  fit  into  the  pigeon- 
holes of  the  older  categorical  sciences. 

A  slightly  different  sort  of  illustration  tells 
the  same  story,  and  I  shall  develop  it  at  some 
length. 

The  other  day,  I  happened  to  take  up  a  book 
published  in  1908,  under  the  title  Economics,  by 
Nearing  and  Watson.  It  w^as  written  as  a  text- 
book for  an  introductory  course  in  economics  at 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  It  would  be  en- 
tirely out  of  my  province  to  express  a  judgment 
whether  it  is  on  the  whole  a  good  book  or  a  bad 
book  for  the  purpose.  That  is  not  my  business. 
In  either  case  the  book  is  a  rather  astonish- 
ing reflection  of  the  modern  propensity  to  dis- 
regard scientific  categories  and  to  get  busy  with 


126       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

the  question,  "What  is  going  on  in  the  world?" 
This  textbook  in  economics  begins  with  a  chap- 
ter on  "Prosperity" !  That  is  very  much  like 
beginning  a  textbook  on  chemistry  with  a  chap- 
ter on  the  food  supply.  Perhaps  we  shall  come 
to  it.  I  do  not  know.  My  point  is  that  for  bet- 
ter or  for  worse  we  are  in  revolt  all  along  the 
line  against  the  stilted  shapings  up  of  real  rela- 
tions in  advance  which  turned  our  whole  scien- 
tific territory  into  a  rococo  landscape  garden. 

At  the  end  of  this  opening  chapter  on  "Pros- 
perity," which  could  hardly  have  been  more 
inclusive  in  its  implications  if  it  were  an  appen- 
dix to  John  Stuart  Mill's  essay  on  Utilitarianism, 
there  are  seven  questions  for  study,  and  these 
furnish  the  substance  of  the  present  illustration, 
namely : 

.  I.  Should  real  prosperity  include  every  mem- 
ber of  the  community  f 

Sure  enough!  Should  it?  A  decent  and 
timely  question!  Who  knows?  Who  knows 
how  to  find  out?  Certainly  no  special  science 
that  has  ever  been  defined.  An  answer  that  pur- 
ported to  be  scientific  from  one  of  these  special 
viewpoints  would  be  as  impertinent  in  general 
as  a  dictum  from  the  American  Statistical 
Association  prescribing  a  standard  of  church 
architecture.     What  is  prosperity?     What  are 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  127 

its  constituents  ?  What  are  its  conditions  ?  What 
are  its  manifestations?  What  are  its  effects? 
The  only  way  to  arrive  at  even  provisional  con- 
clusions on  such  far-reaching  questions  as 
these — and  they  are  all  raised  by  the  question 
set  for  preparatory  exercises  of  the  minds  of 
Pennsylvania  undergraduates — is  by  way  of 
some  sort  of  preliminary  sun^ey  of  what  is 
taking  place  on  the  whole  in  the  course  of 
human  experience,  determining  therefrom  just 
what  we  mean  by  the  popular  term  ''prosperity" 
as  a  symptom  or  partial  product  in  this  whole 
sequence  of  occurrences,  and  then  by  ascertaining 
the  functional  meaning  of  "prosperity"  so  ex- 
plained in  connection  with  the  further  fortunes 
of  the  men  concerned. 

2.  Is  a  nation  with  a  great  foreign  trade  and 
extensive  manufactures  a  prosperous  nation f 

Cable  "Asquith,  Downing  Street,  Collect"! 

In  a  country  with  a  land  question,  a  labor 
question,  a  Lords'  question,  an  education  ques- 
tion, an  establishment  question,  an  Irish  ques- 
tion, a  near  Eastern  question,  a  far  Eastern 
question,  a  variegated  colonial  question,  and  last 
but  not  least  a  Kaiser  question,  how  much 
"British  trade"  makes  or  mars  England's  pros- 
perity— well  it  does  present  a  rather  perspicuous 
problem  for  undergraduate  economists,  doesn't  it  ? 


128       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

3.  What  has  been  the  most  important  factor 
in  developing  the  present  prosperity  of  the  United 
States F 

I  hope  the  Pennsylvania  economists  have 
found  out,  and  I  hope  they  will  tell  the  rest  of 
the  world  whether  that  ''most  important  factor" 
is  still  working  full  time.  Some  people  think  the 
most  important  factor  has  been  the  'little  red 
schoolhouse."  Some  think  it  has  been  the  "New 
England  conscience."  Some  think  it  has  been 
the  Maryland  type  of  religious  toleration.  Some 
think  it  has  been  the  Abraham  Lincoln  spirit  of 
democracy,  and  so  on.  I  wish  I  were  wise 
enough  to  settle  the  question.  I  am  wise  enough 
at  least  to  know  that  the  question  never  will  be 
settled  until  we  have  a  social  calculus  which 
can  strike  an  accurate  balance  between  all  the 
physical  and  moral  and  spiritual  factors  that 
have  molded  American  experience.  No  special 
science  will  ever  give  the  answer. 

4.  What  are  the  chief  differences  between  a 
nation  in  a  state  of  economic  deficit  and  a  nation 
in  a  state  of  economic  surplus? 

Any  university  in  the  world  might  strengthen 
its  historical  staff  from  the  undergraduate  body 
of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  if  those 
young  men  actually  controlled  the  range  of  in- 
duction necessary  for  an  answer  to  this  general 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  129 

question.  What  are  the  chief  differences  be- 
tween an  individual  in  a  state  of  economic  deficit 
and  one  in  a  state  of  economic  surplus?  Those 
differences  depend  on  more  permutations  of  cir- 
cumstances than  can  be  brought  under  the  cate- 
gories of  any  special  science.  For  instance :  one 
individual  is  in  a  state  of  economic  deficit  be- 
cause he  has  dropped  all  his  money  at  the  race 
track;  another  is  in  a  state  of  economic  deficit 
because  he  has  spent  all  he  possesses  and  has 
borrowed  to  the  limit  of  his  credit  to  buy  and 
stock  a  farm.  One  individual  is  in  a  state  of 
economic  surplus  because  he  left  the  saloon, 
after  he  had  cashed  his  pay  check,  without  spend- 
ing any  of  his  week's  wages.  Another  individual 
is  in  a  state  of  economic  surplus  because  he  has 
not  had  quite  enough  time  to  blow  in  the  whole 
of  his  inheritance.  The  differences  between 
these  pairs  of  men  are  not  describable  or  com- 
putable to  any  great  extent  in  terms  of  the  mar- 
ket. In  like  manner  one  nation  may  be  in  a 
state  of  economic  deficit  as  a  result  of  squan- 
dering millions  in  creating  Versailles  and  in 
breeding  its  human  parasites.  Another  nation 
may  be  in  a  state  of  economic  deficit  as  a  result 
of  taking  over  monopolized  lands  and  parceling 
them  out  on  easy  terms  to  a  population  of 
peasants  that  had  been  kept  in  a  condition  hardly 


130      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

above  the  level  of  the  brutes.  Economic  deficits, 
for  individuals  as  for  nations,  may  belong  any- 
where in  the  moral  scale  between  blessing  and 
cursing.  Our  judgment  of  an  economic  deficit, 
as  a  human  phenomenon,  not  as  a  mere  matter 
of  bookkeeping,  has  to  reckon  with  the  whole 
content  and  quality  of  the  civilization  in  which 
the  phenomenon  occurs. 

5.  What  are  the  characteristic  features  of 
the  American  state  of  economic  surplus? 

Does  the  question  refer  to  Pittsburg  or  to 
the  Nevada  divorce  colony?  Does  it  bring  up 
the  New  York  insurance  scandals?  Does  it  hint 
at  those  retreats  for  temporarily  innocuous 
Napoleons  of  finance  at  Atlanta  and  Leaven- 
worth? Does  it  pry  into  the  psychology  of 
standpatism  and  insurgency?  Is  it  prophetic  of 
the  conversion  of  Republican  majorities  of 
thousands  into  Democratic  majorities  of  thou- 
sands in  New  York  and  Massachusetts  congres- 
sional districts?  Does  it  hark  back  into  history 
and  moralize  on  the  meaning  of  the  return  from 
Elba?  Is  it  a  question  for  Fast  Day  or  Thanks- 
giving Day  or  the  Fourth  of  July?  Is  it  a  cue 
for  the  penologist  or  the  preacher  or  the  poli- 
tician ? 

6.  Should  the  emphasis  in  economics  he  laid 
on  production  or  on  distribution? 


UNIVER55H  ' 

OF 


J 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  131 

The  question  cannot  be  answered  except  as  a 
corollary  from  the  answer  to  the  seventh  and 
last: 

7.  What  should  be  the  goal  of  economic 
progress? 

If  there  may  have  been  a  strain  of  facetious- 
ness  in  my  previous  comments,  I  am  now 
thoroughly  in  earnest.  The  fact  that  this  ques- 
tion finds  a  place  at  all  in  modern  textbooks  of 
economics  shows  that  there  has  already  been  a 
remarkable  change  of  front  in  economic  theory. 
Some  economists  realize  this  and  boast  of  it,  and 
even  seem  to  think  it  is  the  one  thing  needful  to 
give  economic  theory  the  floor  for  the  closing 
argument  on  human  relations.  Other  economists 
are  still  shy  about  admitting  that  there  has  been 
any  change  at  all.  They  seem  to  fear  that,  if 
they  should  once  expressly  concede  that  eco- 
nomic problems  must  be  considered  from  a 
different  point  of  view  from  that  of  fifty  years 
ago,  some  flank  movement  would  get  a  start  and 
throw  their  science  into  panic. 

The  truth  is  that,  at  the  time  when  English 
economic  theory  was  most  confident  and  most 
intolerant,  it  made  serious  inquiry  into  the  goal 
of  economic  progress  as  bad  form  in  England  as 
the  discussion  of  slavery  was  in  the  United 
States  Senate  during  the  ten  years  previous  to 


132       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

the  appearance  of  Charles  Sumner.  The  eco- 
nomic orthodoxy  incarnated  in  Richard  Cobden, 
and  known  as  the  doctrine  of  the  Manchester 
School,  was  a  peculiar  species  of  moral  know^- 
nothingism  and  ethical  agnosticism. 

This  is  not  my  dictum.  It  w^as  and  is  the 
almost  universal  judgment  not  merely  of  British 
moral  philosophers,  but  of  German  economists 
from  the  middle  of  the  century,  or  at  least  from 
1870.  If  it  be  objected  that  the  German  judg- 
ment is  an  ex-part e  judgment,  I  will  not  argue 
the  point  beyond  observing  that  assuredly  the 
Gennan  party  is  entitled  to  a  hearing  in  the  court 
of  the  world's  science  as  well  as  the  English 
party. 

Manchesterism  was  a  menace  to  human 
progress  and  an  arrest  of  social  science,  not  be- 
cause its  best-known  advocates  were  bad  men, 
but  because  they  were  good  men,  able  men,  zeal- 
ous men,  conscientious  men,  but  men  with  a 
shriveled  conception  of  the  human  process. 
They  could  not  see  that  the  economic  process  is 
only  a  primary  function  wdthin  the  whole  human 
process.  Their  voice  was  the  voice  of  philoso- 
phy. Their  outlook  was  the  perspective  of 
"British  trade."  The  judicial  form  and  the 
logical  method  of  their  reasoning  silenced  many 
whom  it  did  not  convince,  and  they  long  held 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  133 

their  ground  against  socially  and  intellectually 
feebler  folk  whom  they  could  neither  silence  nor 
convince.  They  had  no  means  of  measuring  the 
cynicism  of  their  view  of  the  world.  They  spoke 
in  tones  of  humanity  and  philanthropy.  Accord- 
ing to  their  light  they  were  well-wishers  and 
even  benefactors  of  their  fellow-men;  but  in  the 
last  analysis  their  formula  of  life  meant:  There 
is  no  business  but  Business,  and  Manchesterism 
is  its  prophet. 

Now  is  there  any  business  but  "Business"? 
This  is  simply  a  more  specific  and  intimate  way 
of  putting  the  question  which  I  have  called  the 
great  question  of  science,  viz. :  What  sort  of  a 
world  is  this  anyway  f  Is  this  a  world  in  which 
"Business"  is  the  only  business  or  not?  Is  this  a 
world  in  which  men  exist  for  the  interests  of 
"Business"  or  "Business"  for  the  interests  of 
men?  Adam  Smith,  whom  men  have  agreed  to 
call  the  founder  of  English  political  economy, 
was  no  more  in  doubt  about  the  answer  to  this 
question  than  you  and  I  are  today.  But  from  the 
beginning  of  the  attempts  to  build  English  eco- 
nomic theory  on  Adam  Smith's  foundation  down 
to  the  time  when  the  younger  Mill  became  the 
enfant  terrible  of  classical  economics,  there  was 
diminishing  freedom  in  England  to  recognize  the 
existence  of  such  a  question ;  and  this  attitude  of 


134       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

mind  has  left  an  influence  as  late  as  our  own 
time.  It  is  a  part  of  the  present  aloofness  of  the 
social  sciences  of  which  I  spoke  in  the  second 
lecture.  Scholars  in  the  different  social  sciences 
have  not  yet  arrived  at  an  explicit  understanding 
with  reference  to  the  methodological  place  which 
belongs  to  "Business"  and  the  theory  of  it. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  specific  incident 
of  the  proposal  of  this  particular  question  in  an 
elementary  economic  textbook  in  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania  has  much  or  little  symptom- 
atic meaning.  That  is  not  the  point  of  the 
illustration.  The  main  thing  I  am  getting  at  is 
that  there  is  a  world  of  difference  between  any 
alleged  science,  whether  economics  or  history  or 
sociology  or  whatever,  which  assumes  that  its 
province  is  a  portion  of  reality  which  may  be 
considered  as  existing  in,  of,  for,  and  by  itself, 
and  a  science  which  perpetually  holds  itself 
responsible  for  connecting  itself  up  with  the 
whole  process  of  life. 

Summing  up  this  long-drawn-out  illustration 
and  all  that  led  up  to  it :  We  are  merely  putter- 
ing with  scientific  trifles,  not  proceeding  toward 
scientific  interpretation,  unless  our  research  is 
constantly  controlled  by  orienting  reference  to 
the  larger  functionings  of  all  that  we  investigate. 
How  can  we  tell  whether  the  emphasis  in  eco- 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  135 

nomic  theory  should  be  on  production  or  on 
distribution  until  we  decide,  in  some  provisional 
way  at  least,  what  the  goal  of  economic  progress 
should  be?  And  how  are  we  to  decide  what  the 
goal  of  economic  progress  should  be?  Shall  we 
decide  by  allowing  a  certain  type  of  economic 
interest  to  close  the  debate  by  edict,  or  shall  we 
decide  by  bringing  all  economic  relations  under 
the  lime-light  of  all  the  experiences  of  life  which 
we  can  now  command,  and  by  finding  out  what 
their  actual  functionings  are  in  the  whole  human 
process  ? 

The  discussion  in  the  previous  lectures  cer- 
tainly licenses  me  to  answer  the  question  tersely, 
without  liability  to  the  charge  of  dogmatism.  It 
is  not  sentimentality,  it  is  cold  critical  science 
which  declares  that  every  activity  of  life  must  be 
held  answerable  to  the  whole  of  life.  We  are 
not  uttering  a  sectarianism,  we  are  voicing  the 
converging  indications  of  all  the  science  there  is 
in  the  world  today,  when  we  declare  that  social 
science  as  a  whole,  not  the  preconceptions  of  any 
of  its  parts,  must  render  the  decision  when,  and 
how  far,  and  under  what  conditions,  any  type  of 
human  activity — the  economic  for  example — may 
be  treated  as  an  end  in  itself,  and  to  what  extent, 
before  and  during  and  after  the  analysis  of  it  in 
isolation,  it  must  be  judged  as  means. 


136       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

The  stake  that  I  want  to  drive  down  in  this 
lecture  is,  that  all  our  social  science,  ragged  and 
random  as  it  is  according  to  the  standard  of  the 
exact  sciences — all  our  social  science  together 
amounts  to  a  certain  tentative  survey  of  life  as 
a  whole.  This  survey  is  a  competent  provisional 
measure  of  the  subordinate  functional  value  of 
any  type  of  activity  within  the  whole.  This  sur- 
vey gives  us  a  connected  view  of  life;  not  a  com- 
plete view  but  at  least  a  loosely  coherent  view, 
a  view  which  is  convincing  as  far  as  it  goes,  a 
view  which  is  itself  engaged  in  a  constant  process 
of  correction,  a  view  that  may  be  shaped  in  a 
formula,  although  the  formula  is  after  all  only  a 
guide  to  further  inquiry.  This  view  of  life  com- 
pletely effaces  the  view  that  ''there  is  no  other 
business  but  Business."  The  big  business  of  men 
is  to  find  out  the  capacities  of  things,  and  to  find 
out  the  capacities  of  themselves,  and  in  and 
through  and  because  of  all  this  finding  out  to  har- 
ness all  the  physical  and  moral  forces  within 
human  control  into  the  main  enterprise  of  trans- 
forming all  the  forces  into  completer  men.  The 
task  of  science  is  primarily  to  understand  how 
far  men  have  gone  in  filling  out  this  career,  and 
then  to  take  account  of  the  capital  at  their  dis- 
posal for  continuing  the  career. 

My  preparatory  illustrations  have  taken  so 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  137 

much  time  that  I  must  pass  abruptly  to  my  for- 
mula. I  simply  interject  the  remark  that  the 
formula  which  I  shall  talk  about  now  does  not 
purport  to  be  a  solution  of  the  symbolic  equation 
referred  to  at  the  beginning  of  this  lecture.  I 
am  dealing  rather  with  the  equation  which  states 
our  question,  not  with  the  one  that  settles  it ;  that 
is,  the  equation  analogous  with  that  with  which 
we  begin  our  simplest  algebraic  inspection.  Just 
as  we  say  at  the  beginning  of  the  statement  of 
the  simplest  algebraic  problem:  "Let  jr=the 
unknown  quantity" ;  so  the  social  sciences  have 
reached  that  stage  in  their  adolescence  at  which 
it  is  enlightening  to  state  their  problem  in 
the  form:  Men's  experience  is  the  evolution  of 
human  values^ 

This  then  is  the  central  formula  by  which  all 
the  social  sciences  today  are  expected  to  organize 
their  reports  of  the  human  reality. 

I  could  not  find  it  in  my  heart  to  be  very 
angry  with  you  if  you  should  reply  that  this 
formula  says  nothing.  It  would  not  surprise  me 
if  you  should  find  in  it  merely  that  most  vapid  of 
platitudes  known  to  the  logicians  as  ''the  iden- 
tical proposition."  I  could  not  blarhe  you  for  the 
retort  that  it  would  be  better  to  give  up  the 
pretense  of  having  arrived  at  an  actual  perception, 


138       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

and  to  admit  that  my  ideas  have  reached  a  dead 
center.  It  would  not  be  strange  if  you  should 
accuse  me  of  thinking  I  have  really  said  some- 
thing, when  my  formula  actually  reduces  to  this : 
Human  experience  is  human  experience ;  or, 
Human  progress  is  human  progress. 

I  have  indeed  brought  these  charges  against 
myself  over  and  over  again;  and  nobody  is  as 
much  interested  as  I  am  in  allowing  them  all  the 
weight  they  deserve.  The  more  I  test  the  for- 
mula, however,  the  more  I  am  convinced  of  its 
value  as  a  tool;  but  I  must  take  time  to  explain 
further  that  its  value  is  not  that  of  a  settlement 
of  anything.  It  is  a  gain  to  use  this  formula 
simply  because  it  brings  the  whole  range  of 
investigation  in  social  science  within  a  field  of 
view  where  it  can  be  intelligently  surveyed.  As 
in  the  analogous  algebraic  case,  our  formula  is 
essentially  more  interrogative  than  indicative. 
At  the  same  time  the  question  which  it  asks  calls 
for  interpretation  of  all  the  evidence  in  connec- 
tion with  the  true  center  of  orientation. 

If  I  wxre  trying  to  explain  my  meaning  to 
an  audience  of  biologists,  I  should  venture,  as  a 
layman  in  their  subject,  to  draw  an  illustration 
from  the  history  of  biology.  If  I  correctly  under- 
stand the  facts  on  the  biological  side,  biologists 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  139 

would  be  better  able  than  social  scientists  to  see 
the  force  of  the  comparison. 

In  brief  the  analogy  is  this :  For  a  consider- 
able time  after  the  publication  of  The  Origin  of 
Species  the  scholars  who  were  convinced  by  it 
believed  that  Darwin  had  accomplished  more  than 
presently  turned  out  to  be  the  case.  That  is,  it 
was  assumed  that  he  had  not  only  established  evo- 
lutionism in  the  place  of  creationism,  but  that 
under  the  rubric  "natural  selection"  he  had  dis- 
covered the  exact  process  of  evolution.  There 
was  a  time  therefore  during  which  the  theories 
of  Darwinians  might  have  been  reduced  to  the 
formula :  Evohition  is  natural  selection.  In  other 
words,  according  to  this  interpretation  the  whole 
life  process  is  an  unfolding  from  within,  not  a 
molding  from  without;  and  second,  "natural 
selection"  is  the  method  of  that  process.  But 
there  came  a  time,  and  I  suppose  it  may  be 
marked  approximately  by  Weismann's  appear- 
ance in  the  field,  when  biologists  began  to  realize 
that  the  phrase  "natural  selection"  had  not 
cleared  up  the  mystery  of  the  life  process,  but 
had  merely  given  a  convenient  name  to  the  mys- 
tery. It  had  not  explained  the  evolutionary  pro- 
cess. It  had  merely  focalized  the  fact  that  there 
is  a  process,  and  it  had  more  explicitly  asked 
the  question.  What  is  the  process}    Suppose  that 


I40      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

when  biologists  had  gone  so  far  one .  of  their 
number  had  declared  that  the  general  formula  of 
the  life  process  is:  Evolution  is  natural  selection. 
It  would  have  been  quite  in  order  then  for  the 
more  acute  thinkers  to  say:  "It  was  merely  an 
identical  proposition.  That  only  says  evolution  is 
evolution.  So  much  goes  without  saying.  By 
giving  the  name  'natural  selection'  to  the  undis- 
covered processes  through  which  evolution  goes 
on  you  have  not  detected  the  methods  of  those 
processes.  You  do  not  get  ahead  by  calling  those 
unknown  processes  'natural  selection.'  You 
simply  tag  them  with  a  new  label.  The  problem 
still  remains :     What  are  the  processes?  " 

As  an  obiter  dictum  I  might  add  that,  from 
a  layman's  point  of  view,  this'^upposition 
fairly,  sums  up  the  general  course  of  thought 
among  the  biologists  duiMig  the.  past  fifty  years. 
Whether  this  estimate  if  correct  or  not,  I  hope 
the  situation  which  I  have  supposed  among  the 
biologists,  for  the  sake  of  illustration,  will  throw 
seme  light  on  the  situation  in  social  science.  As 
1  see  it,  sociai  science  in  general  is  now  in  a  stage 
analogous  with  the  pre-Darwinian  stage  in  biol- 
ogy. There  were  men  before  Darwin  who  be- 
lieved that  the  processes  of  life  developed  from 
within  instead  of  being  determined  from  without. 
It  was  not  until  the  Darwinian  period,  however, 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  141 

that  close  analysis  of  the  method  of  that  unfold- 
ing process  began  to  make  it  seem  very  real.  Be- 
fore that  time  science  was  having  all  it  could  do 
to  establish  the  presumption  that  organic  life  his- 
tory is  essentially  an  internal,  not  an  external, 
process.  With  Darwin  and  Wallace  and  their 
kind  this  alternative  passed  out  of  the  range  of 
scientific  discussion.  The  presumption  had  be- 
come a  conclusion,  and  the  problem  thereafter 
was  not,  Is  the  life  process  internal?  but.  What 
is  this  internal  process? 

As  a  general  proposition  social  science  the 
world  over  is  not  pre-Darwinian  in  the  sense 
that  it  makes  no  use  of  the  ideas  of  growth,  of 
development,  of  evolution.  In  fact  most  social 
scientists  imagine  that  tKey  have  fully  "assimilated 
the  idea  of  development  from  within.  Their 
language*  is  saturated  with  the  forms  of  the  idea, 
and  nine  out  of  ten  of  them  would  indignantly 
deny  that  they  lack  any  of  its  spirit.  But  really 
the  sort  of  process  which'  most  social  scientists 
are  actually  presupposing,  is  as  external  to  real 
men  as  theological  creationism  was  to  the  life 
history  of  organic  species.  Our  social  sciences 
are  making  of  human  experience  not  the  givings 
and  takings  of  actual  men  in  their  processes  of 
accomplishing  their  several  purposes.  Our  social 
sciences  are  still  finding  in  human  experiences  the 


142       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

mystical  maneuverings  of  those  hypostatized 
entities  that  I  spoke  of  in  the  last  lecture — 
institutions,  government,  law,  property,  capital, 
labor,  and  what  not.  In  our  theories  of  experi- 
ence these  abstractions  and  generalizations  from 
men's  activities  compose  a  fictitious  world  utterly 
external  to  the  real  men  acting.  These  real  men 
look  to  the  objective  critic,  and  they  seem  to  them- 
selves as  out  of  place  in  such  interpretations  as 
visitors  from  the  country  do  in  their  actual  plight 
when  they  get  caught  in  the  swirl  of  the  city. 

One  of  the  reasons  why  the  sociologists  have 
had  such  a  hard  fight  for  a  hearing  is  that  we 
have  tried  to  turn  attention  to  the  later  problem 
before  social  scientists  had  solved  the  earlier 
problem.  We  have  tried  to  show  our  peers  that 
we  ought  to  try  to  find  out  what  the  internal 
human  process  is,  before  it  was  settled  in  their 
minds  that  there  is  an  internal  human  process  as 
contrasted  with  an  external. 

It  is  in  this  state  of  social  science  that  my  for- 
mula fits,  and  it  is  to  social  scientists  in  this  state 
of  mind  that  my  formula  is  addressed.  Social 
scientists  are  not  metaphysicians  any  more  than 
the  biologists  are.  There  may  be,  outside  of  our 
range  of  discovery,  cosmic  and  transcendental 
meanings  within  which  everything  pertaining  to 
this  planet  has   the  same   ratio   of   importance 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  143 

which  our  world's  dimensions  have  to  the  extent 
of  the  physical  universe.  That,  however,  is  not 
the  affair  of  social  science.  Its  task  is  to  find  a 
coherent  meaning  for  that  part  of  experience 
which  is  within  human  powers  of  observation. 
Men  are  not  competent  to  prove  that  men  are  the 
most  valuable  phase  of  the  universe.  With  their 
present  knowledge,  however,  men  are  unable  to 
locate  anything  within  their  ken  which  appeals 
to  them  as  more  valuable  than  men.  Whether 
new  light  might  dawn  upon  us  to  modify  this 
judgment  it  would  be  idle  to  guess.  The  fact  is 
that  for  our  present  intelligence  the  meaning  of 
this  world  culminates  in  its  furnishing  resources 
for  the  evolution  of  the  values  of  men. 

No  man  can  prove  why  our  world  exists  at 
all.  On  that  question  we  have  only  religious  and 
speculative  beliefs.  But  the  world  being  given, 
and  our  experience  with  it  being  as  it  is,  no 
interpretation  of  it  can  permanently  convince  our 
minds  which  does  not  make  it  a  system  of  means 
and  ends  with  their  provisional  terminus  in  men. 
The  utmost  stretch  of  our  imagination  ends  with 
the  thought  that  other  sentient  beings  in  the  uni- 
verse may  be  vastly  superior  to  men,  and  vastly 
more  important  in  the  final  accounting;  but  since 
this  is  merely  conjecture  our  interpretations  lose 
reality  when  we  attempt  to  explain  beyond  human 


144      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

values.  No  argument  can  convince  men,"  for 
instance,  that  their  place  in  the  economy  of  the 
world  is  to  keep  up  the  productive  powers  of  the 
soil  by  fertilizing  it  with  their  decaying  bodies. 
Or  again,  no  logical  contradiction  would  be 
involved  in  an  argument  to  the  effect  that  the 
ultimate  meaning  of  men  is  their  employment  as 
a  self -perpetuating  stock  company  to  stage  those 
hypostatized  abstractions  of  which  I  have  spoken. 
When  brought  face  to  face  with  alternatives  of 
this  sort,  however,  men  find  themselves  more  and 
more  unable  to  assume  that  any  possible  argu- 
ment of  -this  kind  can  correspond  with  reality. 
Our  judgmeiits"  of  means  and  ends  all  point  in 
the  other  direction.  Everything  else  mundane  is 
means  to  men,  and  men  can  be  rated  as  means 
only  to  completer  men. 

But  men  are  not  constant  terms  in  a  world 
equation.  Men  are  hot,  like  the  atomicities  and 
specific  gravities  of  chemical  elements,  fixed 
and  unchanging.  Men  are  evolving  combinations 
of  qualities  and  capacities.  We  all  know  this, 
although' we' have  not  yet  put  the  proofs  of  it 
in  such  evident*  order  that  it  is  a  very  vivid  truth. 
If  necessary  to  illustrate  we  might  recall  the  fact 
that  the  ancient  man  was  a  'tool  user,  while  the 
modern  man  is  a  machine  user;  the  ancient  man 
relied  upon  his  individual  memory,  the  modern 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  145 

man  employs  all  sorts  of  records,  or,  as  they  have 
been  called,  the  social  memory;  the  ancient  man 
was  relatively  unfit  to  co-operate  with  his  fellows, 
the  modern  man  is  relatively  adjustable  to  co- 
operation with  his  fellows;  the  ancient  man  was 
relatively  unsympathetic,  the  modern  man  is  rela- 
tively sympathetic.  These  obvious  and  familiar 
differences  are  merely  convenient  representatives 
of  innumerable  more  minute  and  complex  con- 
trasts between  less  evolved  and  more  evolved  men. 

Now  in  all  that  I  have  .said  I  have  not  been 
trying  to  put  an  argument  in  the  form  of  logical 
premises  and  conclusions.  I  have  been  trying  to 
exhibit  the  association  of  ideas  that  is*  steadily 
arranging  itself  in  our  thoughts.  We  are  putting 
these  two  distinct  judgments  into  touch  with  each 
other:  first,  we  interpret  the  experiences  of  life 
in  the  final  appraisal  as  means  to  the  uses  of  men; 
second,  we  interpret  men  as  evolving  values. 

All  that  I  have  argued  then  is  simply  a  digest 
of  these  combined  judgments.  I  have  urged  that 
the  scientific  view  of  the  world,  so  far  as  we  have 
got  it,  comes  out  at  its  clearest  expression  in  the 
formula:  The  experience  of  men  is  the  evolution 
of  human  values. 

This  result  does  not  of  itself  add  to  the  sum 
of  our  knowledge,  and  I  am  taking  special  pains 
to  guard  myself  so  that  I  cannot  possibly  be 


146       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

understood  as  supposing  that  it  does.  The  im- 
portance of  the  formula  is  in  the  added  distinct- 
ness and  unity  which  it  gives  to  our  problem. 
When  we  arrive  at  this  outlook  our  vague  ama- 
teurish question :  ''What  sort  of  a  world  is  this 
anyway?" — or  I  might  better  say  our  vague 
mooning  unconsciousness  that  all  science  has  a 
question  in  common — begins  to  emerge  from  this 
condition  and  to  ask  the  less  vague  and  more 
critical,  more  related  questions:  ''What  are 
human  values?  Why  are  they?  How  may  we 
know  them?  How  are  they  produced?  How 
are  they  to  be  rated  one  with  another?  How 
does  such  knowledge  of  them  as  we  may  get  bear 
upon  our  programs  of  life,  that  is,  upon  further 
production  of  human  values?"  In  other  words, 
recurring  to  the  previous  comparison,  the  formula 
Men's  experience  is  the  evolution  of  human 
values  is  a  signal  for  the  same  sort  of  search  into 
actual  processes  which  began  in  biology  with 
the  belief  that  evolution  is  "natural  selection." 
Now  I  know  very  well  that  the  whole  plan 
of  these  lectures  impresses  you  as  so  remote  from 
your  interests  that  you  have  hard  work  to  force 
yourselves  into  attention  to  them.  This  is  pre- 
cisely the  state  of  mind  which  gives  sociology  its 
vocation.  As  a  general  proposition  social  scien- 
tists are  not  interested  in  the  fundamental  logic 


AS  TERMS  IN  ONE  FORMULA  I47 

of  the  relations  which  they  profess  to  interpret. 
Their  interpretations  have  consequently  been  piti- 
fully superficial,  fragmentary,  and  incoherent. 
Some  scholars  could  not  see  the  forest  for  the 
trees.  Some  could  not  see  the  town  for  the 
houses.  Some  could  not  see  men  for  their  cranial 
dimensions.  Some  could  not  see  them  for  their 
different  technical  devices.  Some  could  not  see 
men  for  their  diversified  arrangements  for  group 
control.  Some  could  not  see  men  for  their  lan- 
guages, some  for  their  varieties  of  religious  belief, 
and  so  on,  and  so  on.  From  the  beginning  the 
sociologists  have  undertaken  to  convince  all  their 
fellow  social  scientists  that  it  is  a  radical  blunder 
not  to  undertake  a  general  survey  which  might 
bring  all  these  phases  and  incidents  of  experience 
within  some  connected  view.  We  have  made  all 
sorts  of  false  starts  in  our  approaches  to  scholars 
of  other  ways  of  thinking.  On  the  other  hand, 
from  their  own  points  of  departure  and  without 
attention  to  the  sociologists,  scholars  of  other 
ways  of  thinking  have  been  approaching  the  soci- 
ologists' way  of  thinking.  Today  there  is  so  much 
of  this  general  logic  of  experience  in  the  premises 
of  each  special  division  of  social  science  that  you 
will  never  rise  above  third-rate  rank  in  any  de- 
partment of  social  science  unless  you  have 
oriented  yourselves  by  this  primary  methodology^ 


148      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

In  spite  of  our  specializations  and  our  dis- 
tracted inattentions  human  experience  is  a  con- 
nected enterprise.  It  is  the  experience  of  the 
eadier  man-brute  skulking  in  his  cave  with  his 
she-brute  mate,  becoming  himself  in  drawing 
near  to  his  kind,  in  pitting  himself  against  his 
kind,  in  joining  hands  with  his  kind,  and  finding 
himself  in  progressive  partnership  with  his  kind. 
This  evolution  is  not  ending  but  beginning. 
Social  science  is  the  self -consciousness  of  this 
experience.  It  is  men's  self-knowledge  of  the 
values  thus  far  achieved ;  it  is  men's  .perception 
of  other  values  within 'their  powers  of  realiza- 
tion; it  is  men's  acquired  technique  for  carrying 
oh  the  achievement;  and  it  is  further 'pursuit  of 
the  achievement  itself. 

In  these  lectures  so  far  I  have  merely  located 
the  center  of  orientation,  and  indicated  the  out- 
look of  the  social  science  which  aims  to  survey 
life  from  this  point  of  vantage.  In  the  lectures 
that  remain  I  shall  try  to  show  how  this  idea  of 
science  in  the  large  works  out  in  certain  more 
specific  aspects  of  the  human  problem. 


LECTURE  VI 

THE   DESCRIPTIVE   PHASE    OF    SOCIAL 
SCIENCE 

The  five  lectures  that  are  behind  us  in  this 
series  have  presented  a  view  of  social  science 
which  may  be  found  piecemeal  in  a  great  many 
books,  but  I  cannot  refer  to  a  writer  who  deliber- 
ately sums  up  the  case  just  as  I  have  presented 
it.  In  a  way  Professor  Robert  Flint's  last 
book,  Philosophy  as  Scientia  Scientiarum  and  a 
History  of  the  Classification  of  the  Sciences; 
in  a  way  Wuhdt's  Methodenlehre;  in  a  way 
Schmoller's  Grundriss  der  allgemeinen  Volks- 
wirthschaftslehre;  in  a  way  Bernheim's  His- 
iorische  Methode,  and  a  great  many  books  of 
smaller  caliber  contain,  partly  in  terms  partly  by 
implication,  all  that  I  have  said. 

Before  expanding  the  argument  more  con- 
cretely I  must  hark  back  to  my  earlier  statement 
that  the  general  outlook  of  the  sociologists  is  not 
essentially  different  from  that  of  most  social  sci- 
entists today  who  have  any  outlook  at  all.  The 
peculiarity  of  the  sociologists,  in  contrast  with 
the  fnajority  of  their  colleagues,  is  that  the'sbci^ 
ologists  insist  that  all  social  science  should  take 
these  solar  observations  every  dayi  arid  r  should 
149 


150       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

compute  its  course  with  reference  to  them;  while 
other  social  scientists  as  a  rule  regard  these  ori- 
enting calculations  as  more  or  less  useless  for 
practical  purposes. 

Sociologists  have  contended  for  the  principle 
that  the  aim  of  social  science  should  be  nothing 
less  than  coherent  interpretation  of  human  experi- 
ence in  the  large.  Men  who  propose  a  more 
restricted  scope  for  social  science,  or  for  a  self- 
sufficing  fragment  of  it,  have  accordingly 
regarded  the  sociologists  as  visionaries  who  were 
concerning  themselves  merely  with  castles  in  the 
air.  These  are  the  men  who  have  looked  upon 
sociologists  as  reincarnations  of  astrology  and 
alchemy,  as  kinds  of  people  who  take  them- 
selves away  from  contact  with  the  substantial 
things  of  science  and  who  conjure  with  unreali- 
ties. I  have  found  a  passage  in  an  obscure  Ger- 
man writer  of  the  eighteenth  century,  in  which 
geographers  are  held  up  to  ridicule  and  contempt 
for  precisely  the  same  reason.  They  are  said  to 
care  for  nothing  that  takes  place  on  the  earth, 
but  to  be  busy  simply  in  drawing  imaginary 
lines. 

Trying  to  see  ourselves  as  others  see  us,  we 
sociologists  must  admit  that  appearances  have 
been  against  us.  Our  attempts  to  plot  human  rela- 
tions in  the  large,  without  confining  ourselves  to 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  151 

any  single  group  or  activity  of  men,  have  very 
naturally  impressed  people  who  were  dealing  with 
more  particular  material  much  as  representing  the 
earth  as  criss-crossed  with  meridians  and  parallels 
must  have  impressed  men  who  measured  their 
land  by  the  number  of  their  horses'  paces,  or  who 
traveled  by  following  the  beaten  roads  or  the 
natural  landmarks.  But  in  fact,  just  as  the  geog- 
raphers' real  interest  was  not  in  the  imaginary 
lines  but  in  the  continents  which  the  lines  helped 
them  to  understand,  so  the  sociologists'  real 
interest  is  not  in  the  abstract  schematology  of 
human  relations  which  we  are  working  out  but 
in  the  experience  of  the  men  reflected  in  those 
forms. 

More  than  this,  by  our  fault  or  our  mis- 
fortune we  have  created  the  impression  among 
other  social  scientists  that  we  are  fantastically 
credulous  about  the  possible  competence  of  social 
science.  We  are  supposed  to  imagine  that  a 
geometry  or  an  algebra  of  human  experience 
is  possible  which  will  measure  the  life  of  man- 
kind in  all  its  dimensions  from  beginning  to  end. 
The  truth  is  that  we  probably  have  at  least  no 
more  extravagant  ideas  about  the  reach  of  our 
possible  knowledge  than  other  social  scientists. 
On  the  contrary,  we  have  contended  that  the  older 
phases  of  social  science  are   resisting  exposure 


152       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

of  the  comparative  flimsiness  of  their  results. 
This  exposure  would  inevitably  follow  analysis 
of  their  program  along  the  lines  of  actual  rela- 
tionship which  sociology  has  drawn.  Our  real 
fault  consists  not  in  overrating  the  possibilities 
of  the  science  that  may  be,  but  in  too  irrever- 
ently uncovering  the  nakedness  of  the  science 
that  is. 

At  different  times  I  have  met  quite  a  num- 
ber of  people  in  Europe  who  wanted  to  talk 
about  our  Civil  War,  and  who  had  settled  opin- 
ions of  a  rather  explicit  sort  about  the  future  of 
the  United'  States.  Before  they  had  gone  far, 
most  of  these  people  dropped  some  remark  which 
plainly  showed  that  they  supposed  the  war  be- 
tween the  states  was  fought  in  South  America. 
Nothing  more  is  necessary  to  explain  why  their 
theories  about  the  future  of  the  United  States 
wxre  more  amusing  than  cogent. 

The  sociologists  urge  that  our  social  sciences 
have  proceeded  in  accordance  with  amateurish 
notions  of  the  motivations  and  the  relationships 
of  the  different  human  conditions,  interests,  and 
activities,  somewhat  like  the  notions  of  the  earth's 
surface  which  prevailed  before  the  geographers 
had  fairly  visualized  locations  and  proportions. 
We  have  urged  and  still  urge  that  the  conclusions 
reached  by  students  of  human  exjperieiice,  from 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  153 

whatever  angle,  would  be  protected  against  pro- 
vincialism and  immaturity  if  they  were  obliged 
to  check  themselves  up  by  comparison  with  the 
charts  of  human  relationships  in  general  which 
the  sociologists  are  constructing. 

On  the  other  hand,  my  impression  is  that  the 
sociologists  in  general  are  more  interested  in 
stimulating  a  demand  for  effective  co-operation 
between  social  scientists  of  all  kinds  than  they 
are  in  building  a  more  stately  hermitage  for  soci- 
ology. I  do  not  feel  quite  as  sure  about  this  lat- 
ter conjecture  as  I  do  about  the  general  argument 
which  I  have  thus  far  presented.  From  this 
point  to  the  close  of  these  lectures  therefore  I 
shall  speak  for  myself  alone.  This  is  not  because 
I  want  to  break  away  from  the  body  of  sociolo- 
gists, but  because  we  come  now  to  the  point 
where  the  real  test  of  the  meaning  of  the  socio- 
logical movement  for  social  science  in  general 
is  to  occur.  The  sociologists  have  arrived  at  no 
very  specific  agreement  among  themselves  about 
the  ways  in  which  they  propose  to  meet  the  test. 
I  want  to  make  it  very  clear,  therefore,  that  in 
what  I  shall  say  in  the  remainder  of  this  series 
I  am  assuming  the  entire  responsibility.  I  am 
not  committing  any  of  my  fellow-sociologists  to 
my  program.  It  may  be  that  other  sociologists 
would  not  indorse  my  conclusions.     My  impres- 


154      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

sion  is  that  no  sociologist  is  likely  to  question 
the  desirability  of  the  policy  I  shall  sketch,  con- 
sidered by  itself.     There  may  be  a  good  deal 
of  objection  to  my  apparent  surrender  of  the 
claims  of  sociology  as  an  independent  science, 
and   to   my   almost   complete   silence   about  the 
inside  phases  of  it,  which  are  the  technique  of 
specialists  in  its  peculiar  subjects. 
f       As  to  this  I  simply  recast  what  I  have  said 
f  before :  There  is  no  such  thing  as  an  independent 
I  science  in  the  strict  sense.     That  whole  manner 
I  of    speaking,    and    the    whole    organization    of 
I  the  personnel  of  science  in  accordance  with  it, 
i  mark  a  juvenile  stage  of  scientific  consciousness. 
There  are  detachable  processes  of  investigation, 
and  there  are  relatively  isolated  phases  of  reality 
to  be  investigated,  but  the  thing  to  be  known  in 
the    final    summary  of    investigation  is  a  con- 
nected whole.     To  the  extent  that  processes  of 
investigation  become  actual  contributors  to  the 
completest  power  of  knowledge,  they  are  neces- 
sary co-operators  with  other  processes  in  con- 
trolling all  the  facts  about  this  whole.     In  these 
lectures  I  am  not  particularly  concerned  about 
bringing  sociology  into  the  foreground,  nor  about 
discussing  its  peculiar  problems  or  processes.     I 
am  interested  in  showing  that  there  are  problems 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  155 

and  processes  which  are  common  and  vital  to  all 
social  science.  If  so  much  can  be  established,  I 
have  no  fear  about  the  ability  of  the  sociologists 
to  make  good  in  their  special  part  of  the  co- 
operative work. 

In  passing  to  the  application  of  what  I  have 
said  under  the  five  earlier  titles,  I  must  again 
call  attention  to  the  fact  that  social  science  in 
the  United  States  has  not  outgrown  leading  ref- 
erence to  the  question,  What  can  we  make  out 
of  our  subject  that  will  be  taken  up  by  the  Bird 
Center  High  School? 

I  will  not  compromise  my  cause  by  consenting 
to  the  inference  that  I  think  this  question  never 
should  be  asked.  In  the  long  run,  science,  like 
all  other  human  achievements,  can  be  only  a 
certain  stage  in  advance  of  general  intelligence. 
If  we  were  calculating  for  the  future  of  science 
on  its  own  account  alone,  we  could  not  afford 
to  ignore  the  Bird  Center  High  School.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  are  quasi-scientific  pro- 
cesses, with  the  pedagogic  interest  chiefly  in 
view,  which  have  the  same  relation  to  the  in- 
crease of  knowledge  that  selecting  school  fur- 
niture to  match  the  lengths  of  the  pupils'  legs 
has  to  research  in  physics,  I  do  not  say  that 
too  much  attention  has  been  paid  in  the  United 
States  to  the  organization  of  such  knowledge 


156       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

material  as  we  have  for  use  in  our  schools 
of  all  grades.  I  do  say  that  we  have  released 
too  little  research  ability.  We  have  dedicated 
too  little  force  to  the  untrammeled  function 
of  making  knowledge  broader  and  deeper.  I 
shall  say  something  later -about  the  pedagogical 
uses  of  social  science.  At  present  I  am  not 
referring  to  that  consideration  at  all.  Of 
course  science  would  be  like  music  in  a  popu- 
lation of  the  deaf  if  there  were  no  provision 
for  its  publicity.  That,  however,  is  a  matter 
logically  subsequent  to  the  work  of  gaining 
knowledge.  At  present  therefore  I  am  referring 
altogether  to  the  interests  of  research. 

Leaving  further  qualifications  until  later  in 
the  discussion,  I  resume  the  main  line  of  argu- 
ment. I  have  said  that  the  primary  function  of 
social  science  is  to  interpret  men's  experience 
in  passing  from  stage  to  stage  in  the  evolution 
of  human  values. 

Suppose  the  men  available  for  research  in 
social  science  in  a  university  with  the  equipment 
of  ours  should  come  to  substantial  agreement 
about  this  proposition.  Suppose  they  should 
deliberately  resolve  themselves  into  an  institute 
for  investigation  in  social  science.  Suppose  they 
should  adopt  the  express  purpose  of  contributing 
toward  answering  the  question :    What  is  human 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  157 

experience,  and  how  stands  it  here  and  now 
with  the  values  that  make  up  its  meaning?  Sup- 
pose my  colleagues  delegated  me  to  draft  a  plan 
of  procedure  in  furtherance  of  that  purpose. 

I  should  begin  with  a  brief  digest  of  the 
reasons  which  had  led  to  the  formation  of  the 
institute  or  academy  of  social  science.  I  should 
recommend  that  a  chairman  of  the  body  be 
chosen  from  time  to  time  and  that  the  selection  in 
each  case  should  have  reference  to  the  particular 
kind  of  work  then  in  progress.  I  should  hope 
accordingly  that  the  chairman  chosen  at  the  out- 
set would  be  a  man  of  catholic  intelligence  and 
interest  about  social  science  as  a  whole,  and  able 
to  maintain  an  attitude  of  judicial  impartiality 
between  the  claims  of  his  own  particular  prob- 
lems and  those  that  are  waiting  for  solution 
elsewhere. 

The  first  business  which  I  should  propose 
after  the  body  had  elected  its  chairman  would  be 
consideration  of  the  question:  What  piece  of 
work  within  the  field  of  social  science  may  we 
most  profitably  undertake? 

The  course  of  thought  which  had  led  to  the 
combination  for  co-operative  research  would 
have  demonstrated  the  necessity  of  this  first  step. 
Everybody  would  have  become  aware,  even  if 
only  dimly  conscious  of  it  before,  that  an  organi- 


158      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

zation  numbering  perhaps  not  more  than  forty 
scholars  could  hope  to  make  a  real  contribution 
to  social  science,  as  distinct  from  a  mere  re- 
arrangement of  existing  knowledge,  only  by 
selecting  some  passage  or  aspect  of  human 
experience,  and  by  intensive  work  upon  it  with 
all  the  means  of  investigation  controlled  by  the 
group. 

Suppose  that  all  the  difficulties  involved  in 
such  a  choice  were  overcome,  and  that  the  group 
had  decided  to  investigate  the  experience  of  the 
French  from  the  death  of  Louis  XV  to  the 
fall  of  the  first  Napoleon.^ 

The  next  feature  of  the  plan  which  I  should 
propose  would  be  the  passing  of  the  group  into 
committee  of  the  whole  with  a  historian  as 
chairman.  Of  course  a  task  might  have  been 
undertaken  in  which  a  political  scientist  or  an 
economist  would  be  a  more  useful  chairman. 

The  first  task  which  would  confront  the 
group  under  the  formation  suggested  would  be 
that  of  taking  into  consideration  the  state  of 

^  For  reasons  which  will  appear  in  the  next  lecture,  I 
add  the  comment  that  no  opinion  about  the  relative  im- 
portance of  this  particular  passage  of  experience  was  im- 
plied by  taking  it  as  an  illustration.  In  these  lectures  I 
intentionally  refrain  from  expressing  my  own  views  about 
the  kind  of  investigation  which  it  would  be  most  service- 
able for  such  an  institute  to  undertake. 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  159 

the  evidence,  and  of  the  theories  that  have  been 
advanced  about  the  meaning  of  the  evidence, 
as  a  preliminary  to  its  own  discussion  of  the 
situation. 

I  use  the  designation,  "the  descriptive  phase 
of  social  science,"  for  this  particular  aspect  of 
every  scientific  process.  Neither  on  this  phase 
nor  on  the  others  to  be  treated  in  the  following 
lectures  can  I  go  into  minute  questions  of  tech- 
nique that  come  into  prominence  in  the  respective 
stages  of  investigation.  I  can  refer  only  to  cer- 
tain cardinal  methodological  considerations. 

Let  us  suppose  then  that  we  have  gone  so 
far  as  to  face  the  question,  What  is  known  cmd 
what  has  been  thought  about  the  selected  pas- 
sage in  the  experience  of  the  French?  I  am  not 
now  leading  up  to  a  particular  scheme  of  descrip- 
tion. I  have  no  theory  of  my  own  to  exploit 
about  the  meaning  of  the  French  Revolution.  I 
know  simply  the  more  familiar  literature  of 
the  subject.  I  have  gone  into  it  just  deep 
enough  to  be  convinced  that  very  few  last  words 
have  been  said  about  its  meaning,  and  the 
more  final  they  seem  the  more  commonplace  they 
are  likely  to  be  in  effect.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
attempts  to  interpret  the  facts  have  left  me  in 
precisely  that  state  of  suspended  judgment  with 


i6o       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

which  it  would  be  desirable  for  our  committee  of 
the  whole  to  begin  its  work. 

Assuming  a  condition  of  complete  open-mind- 
edness;  assuming  that  the  scenes  in  the  human 
drama  enacted  by  the  French  between  the  dates 
selected  mean  something  as  a  fragment  of  all 
human  experience;  the  task  of  our  committee  of 
the  whole  is  to  get  at  a  description  of  the  facts 
just  as  they  were. 

For  over  a  hundred  years  the  historians  have 
been  showing  that  this  process  of  ascertaining 
the  bare  facts  is  by  no  means  as  simple  as  it 
sounds.  I  cannot  rehearse  even  the  chief  points 
of  their  discoveries  in  this  connection,  but  I  must 
seize  upon  one  main  feature  of  the  whole  affair. 
The  historians  found  it  out  for  themselves,  but 
the  sociologists  have  taken  up  the  discovery  and  I 
think  they  have  added  something  to  the  histori- 
ans' use  of  it. 

The  moment  the  committee  moves  in  the 
direction  of  the  task  of  exhibiting  the  facts,  it 
encounters  the  reality  which  I  spoke  of  in  the 
last  lecture,  namely:  No  fact  can  be  described 
just  as  it  zuas  unless  it  is  described  in  all  of 
its  functionings  as  a  phase  of  the  whole  com- 
plex of  experience  within  which  it  occurred. 

Robert  E.  Lee  obeyed  the  mandate  of  the 
state  of  Virginia,  not  that  of  the  federal  govern- 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  i6l 

ment.  Was  it  consummate  treason  or  consum- 
mate patriotism?  Men  are  still  describing  it  in 
both  terms,  according  to  the  point  of  view.  In 
reality  it  was  neither.  It  was  the  reluctant 
choice  of  a  noble  man  caught  between  the  con- 
flicting duties  of  an  impossible  situation.  No 
one  can  interpret  Robert  E.  Lee  without  inter- 
preting the  whole  previous  history  of  the  United 
States,  and  not  the  political  history  alone  but 
the  industrial,  social,  and  religious  history  as 
well. 

I  may  be  allowed  the  remark  in  passing 
that,  in  my  modest  opinion,  we  have  not  yet  so 
exhausted  the  interpretation  even  of  our  brief 
American  history  that  the  sort  of  co-operative 
work  upon  it  for  which  I  am  pleading  would  be 
thrown  away. 

But  this  is  the  point:  If  we  cannot  interpret 
the  crucial  act  in  the  life  of  one  man  without 
interpreting  the  history  of  his  whole  nation,  how 
much  less  can  we  interpret  the  thousands  of  lead- 
ing and  the  millions  of  led  French,  from  Rous- 
seau to  Robespierre,  and  then  from  the  tenth 
Thermidor  to  Waterloo! 

Suppose  our  committee  of  the  whole  is  thor- 
oughly alive  to  all  this.  At  the  outset  of  its 
work  of  describing  the  French  as  they  were  in 
1774  it  encounters  the  puzzling  fact  that  they 


l62       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

too  were  historical  products.  In  order  to  begin 
to  describe  them  the  committee  must  be  informed 
about  their  antecedents.  Some  provisional  satis- 
faction of  this  requirement  must  be  reached,  or 
there  could  be  no  intermediate  study  of  experience 
until  we  had  made  out  absolute  beginnings  and 
had  reconstructed  the  historical  sequence  in  full 
to  the  date  of  the  proposed  inquiry. 

Let  us  suppose  that  the  committee  has  some- 
how adjusted  this  difficulty.  How  should  its 
work  proceed? 

As  I  am  merely  a  layman  in  knowledge  of 
the  period  I  have  chosen  for  illustration,  I  make 
no  apology  either  for  the  purely  conventional  or 
for  the  unconventional  part  of  my  approach  to 
a  schedule  of  the  subdivisions  into  which  the 
work  of  assembling  and  of  sorting  the  evidence 
and  the  hypotheses  would  fall. 

The  usual  device  of  subcommittees  for  differ- 
ent parts  of  the  work  may  be  taken  for  granted. 
My  plan  would  accordingly  provide  for  a  sub- 
committee on  organization  with  reference  to  the 
particular  work  in  hand.  It  would  be  the  duty 
of  this  committee  to  recommend  a  list  of  sub- 
committees adapted  tO'  the  division  of  labor 
which  seemed  provisionally  expedient;  it  would 
be  the  further  duty  of  this  committee  from  time 
to  time  to  recommend  reorganizations  of  the  sub- 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  163 

committees  as  the  progress  of  the  investigation 
might  indicate. 

As  this  subcommittee  on  organization  would 
presumably  be  composed  of  men  whose  study 
of  the  period  had  given  them  somewhat  definite 
opinions  about  the  content  of  the  experience  to  be 
described,  these  same  men  might  also  be  charged 
with  the  duty  of  presenting  a  general  working 
sketch  of  the  facts  to  be  investigated. 

For  further  purposes  of  illustration  I  will 
anticipate  the  first  report  of  the  subcommittee  on 
organization.  It  very  properly  puts  at  the  head 
of  the  list  a  subcommittee  on  general  bibliog- 
graphy.  On  this  committee  at  the  outset  the 
rough  work  would  fall.  On  an  extended  scale 
its  initial  procedure  would  be  that  which  every 
lecturer  on  history  to  graduate  students  under- 
takes in  a  more  limited  way  in  connection  with 
each  of  his  courses.  It  would  be  the  duty  of 
this  committee  not  merely  to  collect  the  most 
important  titles,  but  to  classify  the  significant 
literature  on  the  period  from  two  points  of 
view :  first,  with  reference  to  the  kind  of  sources 
used  and  the  methods  of  using  the  sources; 
second,  with  reference  to  the  hypotheses  or  pre- 
suppositions by  which  the  different  writers  had 
wittingly  or  unwittingly  guided  their  work. 

The  reports  of  this  subcommittee  from  time 


164       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

to  time  would  inevitably  have  the  effect  of  rec- 
ommendations about  the  divisions  into  which 
the  descriptive  work  should  fall.  Whether  the 
members  of  this  subcommittee  had  begun  the 
work  with  or  without  decided  opinions  about  the 
groupings  of  facts  within  the  period,  they  would 
surely  gain  impressions  from  their  assortings  of 
the  secondary  literature  which  would  make  them 
earnest  debaters  in  the  later  consultations  of  the 
whole  body.  They  would  arrive  at  firm  convic- 
tions about  the  necessary  classifications  not 
merely  of  the  secondary  but  of  the  primary 
sources.  It  is  altogether  probable  that  they  might 
reach  judgments  about  tentative  schemes  of  de- 
scription quite  at  variance  with  those  submitted 
by  the  subcommittee  on  organization.  If  the  evi- 
dence should  lend  itself  to  more  than  one 
hypothesis,  every  difference  of  this  sort  would 
tend  at  last  to  make  the  work  of  the  whole  body 
more  convincing. 

I  assume  that  the  subcommittee  on  organi- 
zation would  be  better  acquainted  than  I  am  with 
the  period  in  question,  and  would  be  able  to  pro- 
pose more  adequate  tentative  subdivisions  of  the 
work  than  I  could.  My  further  anticipations 
therefore  are  merely  the  conjectures  of  a  lay- 
man about  possible  divisions  of  labor. 

The  specifications  which  I  assume  that  the 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  165 

subcommittee  on  organization  would  next  submit 
would  provide  for  a  subcommittee  on  each  prin- 
cipal phase  of  the  activities  of  Frenchmen  visible 
at  the  accession  of  Louis  XVI.  This  list  of  sub- 
committees would  necessarily  represent  a  hypothe- 
sis about  the  number  and  nature  of  the  dis- 
tinctive phases.  It  would  be  the  working  form 
of  the  organizing  committee's  hypothesis  about 
the  cardinal  features  of  the  facts  to  be  reduced 
to  a  composite  picture.  In  so  far  it  would  be  an 
assumption  about  the  conclusion  before  the  evi- 
dence had  been  collected.  If  this  assumption 
were  adopted  in  such  a  way  that  it  would  in 
any  degree  predetermine  the  findings  of  the  com- 
mittee of  the  whole  as  to  the  phases  of  the  expe- 
rience which  are  to  be  considered  as  cardinal,  it 
would  by  so  much  impair  the  value  of  the  entire 
inquiry.  The  fact  that  numerous  subcommittees 
were  charged  with  investigation  each  of  a  differ- 
ent phase  of  activities  supposed  to  be  of  cardinal 
importance  in  the  given  situation,  would  best 
insure  against  this  sort  of  error.  Each  sub- 
committee would  find  that  the  phase  of  the 
experience  with  which  it  was  primarily  concerned 
was  affected  by  other  phases,  and  between  them 
they  would  be  able  to  amend  the  schedule  as  the 
work  proceeded,  by  increasing  or  reducing  the 
number  of  factors  to  be  regarded  as  principal. 


l66       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

Still  further,  the  work  of  each  of  these 
subcommittees  would  in  part  overlap  and  dupli- 
cate that  of  the  subcommittee  on  general  bibli- 
ography. All  of  the  secondary  writers  would 
have  depended,  in  one  degree  or  another,  upon 
the  particular  kinds  of  evidence  that  would  be 
uncovered  in  greater  abundance  by  the  more  in- 
tensive work  on  the  special  subjects.  The  over- 
lapping and  duplication  would  be  more  of  a  gain 
than  a  loss,  however,  not  chiefly  because  they 
would  be  checks  upon  oversights,  but  because  they 
would  be  positive  exhibits  of  the  interconnec- 
tions of  the  same  facts.  The  different  commit- 
tees would  come  upon  the  same  evidence  from 
different  angles  of  approach,  or  upon  evidence 
having  important  bearings  upon  other  subjects 
than  the  one  with  which  they  were  primarily 
dealing.  The  duplications  would  stimulate  in- 
spection of  each  kind  of  evidence  in  all  the  rela- 
tions in  which  it  had  a  value. 

To  take  an  illustration  from  a  parallel  case: 
In  working  on  a  problem  in  the  theory  of  finan- 
cial administration  in  Germany  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  I  casually  turned  up  evidence  that  would 
be  worth  considering  not  only  in  each  of  the 
main  divisions  of  social  science  as  ordinarily 
understood,  but  in  the  history  of  language,  of 
theology,  of  education,  of  several  physical  sci- 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  167 

ences,  and  particularly  of  the  practice  of  medi- 
cine. In  each  instance  the  sort  of  evidence  which 
I  happened  upon  while  looking  for  something 
else  might  modify  historical  conclusions  about 
the  subject  in  which  the  evidence  primarily 
belonged.  Yet  these  particular  items  might  long 
escape  the  attention  of  men  who  were  searching 
directly  for  them  in  more  expected  connections. 

It  is  safe  to  assume  further  that  a  subcom- 
mittee would  be  formed  on  the  physical  condi- 
tions in  France  at  the  date  selected,  and  on  the 
use  which  Frenchmen  were  making  of  their 
physical  surroundings.  What  were  the  physical 
means  of  the  French,  in  terms  both  of  the  natural 
endowment  of  the  country  and  of  the  known 
technique  for  exploiting  nature?  What  scope 
was  there  for  Frenchmen  to  get  a  living?  The 
inquiry  would  naturally  range  from  the  scrappy 
sort  of  evidence  in  Arthur  Young's  Travels  to 
scientific  and  official  surveys  of  the  resources  of 
the  country. 

There  would  of  course  be  another  subcom- 
mittee on  the  property  relations,  and  their  bear- 
ings upon  the  living  which  Frenchmen  actually 
did  get.  Here  would  be  lawyers'  work;  but  the 
problem  would  be  not  only  what  laws  were  on 
paper,  but  whether  the  laws  on  paper  were 
in  force,  and  how  the  laws  in  force  compared 


l68       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

with  the  laws  in  writing.  Moreover,  this  com- 
mittee would  have  to  find  out  what  customs  not 
written  were  stronger  than  laws  that  were  written, 
and  in  just  what  ways  these  coercive  customs 
molded  the  people.  It  would  have  to  find  out 
what  differences  there  were  in  the  shares  of 
Frenchmen  in  the  gross  output  of  material  goods ; 
whether  these  shares  corresponded  with  the 
respective  services  of  Frenchmen  to  one  another; 
and  if  not,  why  not. 

There  would  have  to  be  another  subcommit- 
tee on  the  public  law  relations  of  the  time,  their 
variations  between  theory  and  practice,  and  their 
bearings  upon  the  private  life  of  citizens. 

Another  subcommittee  would  deal  with  the 
people  in  their  ecclesiastical  relations.  The 
church  historians  would  have  to  take  the  lead 
here,  and  they  would  have  an  excellent  oppor- 
tunity to  illustrate  the  ever-present  fact  that 
things  are  not  necessarily  what  they  are  labeled. 
To  what  extent  was  the  church  life  of  the  French 
at  this  time  a  medium  of  religious  expression, 
and  to  what  extent  was  it  other  things,  for 
instance  a  subtle  medium  by  which  some  classes 
controlled  other  classes? 

There  ought  to  be  another  subcommittee  on 
the  state  of  knowledge  and  opinion  in  France. 
What  were  Frenchmen  thinking  about,  and  what 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  169 

were  they  thinking  about  it?  To  what  extent 
were  they  thinking  about  the  same  things,  and 
to  what  extent  were  they  thinking  the  same 
thoughts  about  those  things?  To  what  extent 
did  thinking  about  different  things,  or  thinking 
different  thoughts  about  the  same  things,  divide 
Frenchmen  into  groups  pursuing  different  inter- 
ests, and  what  relations  did  these  thought-group- 
ings have  with  the  groupings  formed  in  other 
ways? 

This  last  question  illustrates  one  of  the 
occasions  which  these  subcommittees  would 
incessantly  have  for  comparing  notes,  and  for 
revising  judgments  as  to  others'  findings. 

There  should  be  a  subcommittee  on  the  aes- 
thetic life  of  the  people.  It  should  investigate  not 
merely  the  status  of  the  fine  arts  as  usually  under- 
stood. It  should  try  to  find  out  to  what  extent, 
and  in  what  quantities  and  stratifications,  artistic 
expression  Avas  a  part  of  the  life  of  Frenchmen 
when  Louis  the  Stupid  took  the  place  of  Louis  the 
Sensual.  It  should  record  not  only  the  cathedrals 
and  the  palaces  which  they  built,  and  the  pictures 
they  painted,  and  the  statues  they  carved,  and  the 
songs  they  sung.  It  should  have  attention  for 
the  songs  which  they  did  not  sing,  where  life  is 
desolate  without  song.  It  should  find  out  who 
amused  himself,  and  who  slaved  that  the  other 


lyo       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

might  be  amused.  It  should  search  out  the  scale 
of  the  distribution  of  enjoyment  in  the  aesthetic 
sense,  and  it  should  stand  ready  to  fit  these 
facts  into  their  share  of  prominence  in  the  total 
situation. 

There  should  be  a  subcommittee  on  the 
struggles  for  power  at  the  moment.  What  men 
were  planning  to  change  their  position  in  the 
social  scale,  and  why?  What  interests  were 
impelling  these  men?  Did  the  prominent  indi- 
viduals represent  themselves  alone,  or  were  they 
thrust  forward  by  groups  who  used  them  as 
battering-rams  or  as  scapegoats,  or  were  they 
blends  of  the  two  characters?  Did  they  see 
opportunities  to  promote  their  own  private  ambi- 
tions by  serving  as  tools  for  many  incapable  of 
wielding  their  own  tools? 

There  should  be  a  subcommittee  on  the  moral 
codes  of  Frenchmen  in  those  later  days  of  the 
Bourbons.  What  did  Frenchmen  think  wrong 
and  right?  What  was  their  standard  of  wrong 
and  right?  Was  it  an  individual  or  a  social 
standard?  Was  it  a  standard  of  worth  or  of 
enjoyment?  Was  it  one  standard  for  all  or  a 
sliding  scale?  What  sanctions  had  it?  What 
were  its  actual  bearings  upon  the  life  led  by 
Frenchmen  at  the  time? 

There  should  be  a  subcommittee  on  the  rela- 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  1 71 

tions  between  Frenchmen  and  other  Europeans 
of  the  period.  ^  To  what  extent  was  the  Hfe  of 
Frenchmen  at  this  time  their  own  life,  and  to 
what  extent  a  Hfe  forced  upon  them  by  their 
neighbors  ?  To  what  extent  was  it  a  reaction  of 
their  attempts  to  force  a  life  upon  their  neigh- 
bors ? 

I  do  not  know  enough  about  Frenchmen  of 
this  period  to  know  how  many  more  subjects 
should  be  assigned  to  as  many  subcommittees. 
For  the  purpose  of  this  illustration  it  is  not 
necessary  that  I  should  know.  I  have  said 
enough  to  carry  my  point.  The  committee  of 
the  whole  which  had  divided  itself  into  so  many 
subcommittees  would  soon  be  in  full  cry  after 
aspects  of  the  life  of  Frenchmen  which  had 
escaped  their  preliminary  survey. 

I  was  in  the  generation  of  college  students 
that  saw  the  transition  from  the  textbook  to  the 
laboratory  method  in  science.  I  used  to  see 
experiments  in  chemistry  in  which  chemical 
processes  were  demonstrated.  In  physics  I  never 
saw  an  experiment  that  proved  anything.  The 
college  possessed  a  small  junkshop  of  physical 
apparatus  which  was  never  in  order.  All  the 
good  we  ever  got  out  of  it  was  an  unbroken 
series    of    exhibitions    that    those    contrivances 


172       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

could  not  be  made  to  work  as  the  theory  said 
they  should. 

We  have  not  passed  out  of  the  stage  of 
social  science  in  which  there  is  a  similar  contrast 
between  theory  and  actual  human  experience. 
From  Herodotus  down  a  few  men  have  been 
able  to  give  literary  renderings  of  men's  actions 
which  made  more  or  less  effective  appeals  to 
other  men's  imaginations.  During  the  last  hun- 
dred years  men  have  put  more  and  more  effort 
into  the  work  of  composing  versions  of  human 
experience  which  should  literally  correspond 
with  reality.  I  do  not  deny  that  they  have  suc- 
ceeded in  some  degree,  and  on  the  other  hand 
it  would  be  entirely  unreasonable  to  suppose  that 
human  experience  could  ever  be  measured  as 
accurately  as  physical  phenomena.  Scholars 
know,  however,  that  it  is  well  within  the  range 
of  men's  ability  to  understand  human  experi- 
ence, both  in  detail  and  in  the  large,  much  more 
precisely  and  comprehensively  than  it  has  ever 
been  interpreted  thus  far.  One  indispensable 
condition  of  this  advance  is  willingness  to  apply 
the  necessary  amount  of  mental  force.  I  think 
I  have  sufficiently  indicated  that  the  relatively 
simple  descriptive  stages  of  inquiry  into  a  social 
situation  are  far  beyond  the  capacities  of  one 
individual  or  of  a  few  individuals.     If  the  de- 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  173 

scription  is  to  be  as  thorough,  for  instance,  as 
the  preparation  of  an  important  case  for  trial  in 
court — and  surely  this  is  not  an  excessive  de- 
mand in  the  name  of  science — it  must  enlist  the 
energies  of  many  individuals. 

I  was  in  London  at  the  time  of  the  final 
hearing  of  the  Alaska  boundary  claims.  The 
facts  involved  did  not  present  a  thousandth  part 
of  the  complexity  of  the  facts  in  the  experience 
of  Frenchmen  during  the  forty  years  taken  for 
our  illustration.  I  do  not  know  how  many 
people  were  employed  first  and  last  in  working 
up  the  Alaska  case.  I  remember  that  I  happened 
to  be  in  the  courtyard  of  the  Hotel  Cecil  when 
the  evidence  was  carted  up  to  the  entrance  of  the 
rooms  where  the  commission  w^as  to  sit.  The 
amount  of  this  material  which  I  saw  filled  two 
large  vans.  I  do  not  know  how  much  more 
there  was.  Yet  this  evidence  covered  merely  the 
different  aspects  of  the  relatively  trivial  and 
simple  matter  of  locating  a  boundary  line  in 
mostly  uninhabited  country.  What  idea  should 
we  form  of  the  comparative  bulk  and  compara- 
tive complexity  of  the  evidence  that  would  be 
necessary  for  drawing  all  the  lines  of  relation- 
ship in  an  authentic  picture  of  all  the  inhabitants 
of  France  on  the  eve  of  the  Revolution? 

Before  leaving  the  preliminaries  leading  up 


174       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

to  a  description  of  the  experience  we  have  used 
for  our  illustration,  I  must  remark  that  our 
committee  of  the  whole  has  so  far  planned  only 
one  thin  section,  so  to  speak,  out  of  the  several 
strata  of  description  which  evidently  must  be 
drawn  over  and  into  one  another  in  order  to 
cover  even  this  brief  period  of  forty-one  years. 
The  fact  that  men's  experience  is  an  incessant 
evolution  of  human  values  is  in  evidence  in  this 
case  after  the  most  superficial  inspection.  We 
speak  of  Frenchmen  of  the  period  as  though 
they  were  relatively  as  constant  as  the  Rhine  or 
the  Alps  at  the  same  period.  In  reality  the 
whole  meaning  of  the  period  is  to  be  traced  in 
the  inconstancy  of  the  French  during  these  years. 
In  the  first  place  members  of  three  generations 
were  on  the  stage  of  action  during  this  time. 
Some  men  who  helped  to  drag  him  to  the  guil- 
lotine were  not  born  when  Louis  XVI  was 
crowned;  and  the  sons  of  some  of  these  fought 
under  Napoleon  on  the  day  of  his  final  disaster. 
In  the  second  place,  these  mere  comings  and 
goings  of  the  generations  are  by  no  means  the 
surest  signs  of  the  systole  and  diastole  of  the 
evolutionary  process,  of  the  sinkings  and  risings 
of  personal  qualities  and  social  morale  in  which 
human  values  are  transmuted.  How  many  sit- 
tings must  the  camera  of  history  demand  of  the 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  175 

Frenchmen  of  these  four  decades  in  order  to  get 
all  the  negatives  which  must  be  merged  into  the 
composite  photograph?  If  our  committee  is  at 
last  able  to  describe  Frenchmen  of  the  first  year 
of  the  period,  is  it  certain  that  the  picture  corre- 
sponds with  actual  Frenchmen  every  year  down 
to  the  meeting  of  the  States  General?  If  so, 
how  soon  was  the  transformation  so  great  that 
another  picture  would  be  required  for  identifica- 
tion? Did  a  couple  of  months  or  a  couple  of 
eras  separate  that  fifth  of  May  from  that  four- 
teenth of  July,  and  can  our  committee  consider 
its  labors  closed  with  a  description  of  the  French 
at  either  date?  Would  Lafayette  at  that  stage 
have  recognized  as  the  features  of  his  country- 
men a  truthful  picture  of  Frenchmen  as  they 
were  to  be  in  that  arrogant  ''Year  One''  of  the 
French  Republic?  If  he  could  have  credited 
that  picture,  could  his  credulity  have  been 
stretched  to  accept  the  picture  of  the  fourth 
month  of  that  year,  with  Frenchmen  changed  to 
regicides  ? 

Even  my  ignorance  of  the  period  is  not  so 
naive  that  I  suppose  all  Frenchmen  changed  their 
characters  as  often  and  as  capriciously  as  the 
coteries  that  controlled  in  Paris.  But  how  often 
and  how  thoroughly  did  Frenchmen  change 
their  individual  and  group  equations,  from  the 


176       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

Frenchmen  who  loathed  the  disease  of  Bour- 
bonism  to  the  Frenchmen  who  welcomed  the 
remedy  of  restored  Bourbons? 

Our  committee  of  the  whole  must  find  its 
answers  to  these  questions,  and  of  course  it  will 
not,  as  the  terms  of  the  questions  might  seem 
to  imply,  find  that  the  answers  coincide  with  the 
mere  shif tings  of  political  control.  But  what 
were  the  essential  changes  in  Frenchmen,  espe- 
cially during  the  second  half  of  the  period,  after 
their  public  life  had  changed  from  panoramic  to 
kaleidoscopic  ? 

I  have  mapped  out  as  much  preliminary  de- 
scriptive work  for  our  committee  of  the  whole 
as  my  time  permits  me  to  sketch,  and  in  the  next 
lecture  we  must  pass  to  another  aspect  of  the 
scientific  process.  In  closing  I  want  to  make  it 
clear  that  I  am  not  engaged  in  a  diversion  of 
Utopian  word-painting.  I  have  not  conjured  up 
this  illustration  as  a  play  of  the  imagination,  as 
a  parody  of  the  literal  process  which  scientists 
must  perform.  On  the  contrary,  every  indi- 
vidual who  studies  a  past  or  present  experience, 
or  stands  thoughtfully  contemplating  the  paths 
opening  in  the  future,  has  to  encounter  all  these 
problems  of  relationship.  He  is  bound  to  go  as 
far  as  his  individual  powers  permit  toward  per- 
forming this   whole   preliminary  process   along 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  PHASE  177 

with  the  later  processes.  The  validity  of  all  his 
conclusions,  and  the  probable  contribution  of  all 
his  actions  to  the  main  work  of  promoting  the 
evolution  of  human  values,  will  depend  on  his 
success  in  guessing  out  an  approximate  balance 
of  these  relations.  No  individual  can  ever  by 
his  unaided  powers  accomplish  much  more  than 
a  sagacious  guess. 

How  obvious  it  is  then  that,  in  order  to  dis- 
charge their  function  of  interpreting  to  all  the 
experience  of  all,  scholars  must  raise  their  work 
to  its  highest  power  by  co-ordinating  their  labors 
so  that  they  may  as  far  as  possible  constitute 
means  proportioned  to  the  task!  Sooner  or 
later  scholars  will  recognize  the  force  of  this 
reasoning.  Some  American  university,  and  per- 
haps in  no  very  distant  future,  will  seize  this 
opportunity.  It  will  encourage  its  scholars  in 
the  social  sciences  to  resolve  themselves  into  a 
body  of  co-operating  investigators  such  as  I  have 
sketched.  The  university  which  takes  this  step 
will  at  once  leap  into  a  position  of  leadership  as 
unique  as  that  which  was  occupied  by  Johns 
Hopkins  University  during  the  fifteen  years  im- 
mediately following  its  foundation. 

More  than  this,  someone,  perhaps  Mr.  Car- 
negie himself,  will  presently  see  that  human  in- 
terests create  a  demand  for  investigation  of  the 


178       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

meaning  of  human  experience  on  a  scale  for 
which  we  have  no  present  provision.  If  the  in- 
come of  the  Carnegie  foundation  were  to  be 
reserved  entirely  for  research  in  physical  science, 
and  an  equal  endowment  were  dedicated  to  the 
support  of  such  an  institute  of  social  science 
as  I  have  hinted  at,  the  second  foundation  would 
certainly  not  lag  behind  the  first  in  justifying  its 
existence  by  its  services.  It  is  due  to  the  pro- 
vincialism of  scholars  themselves  more  than  to 
any  other  cause  that  the  need  of  organized  in- 
vestigation in  social  science  has  not  been  recog- 
nized, and  that  the  endowment  for  it  has  not 
been  secured. 

I  announce  myself  as  a  candidate  for  a 
prophet's  fame  to  this  extent :  Some  of  my  hear- 
ers will  live  to  see  co-operative  research  in  social 
science  on  a  scale  which  will  amount  to  more 
progress  in  method  and  in  the  value  of  results 
than  came  with  Niebuhr's  processes  of  sifting 
fact  from  fancy  in  Roman  tradition.  If  I  can 
do  nothing  to  hasten  that  event,  I  may  at  least 
put  myself  on  record  as  having  foreseen  its 
approach. 


LECTURE  VII 

THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

In  the  first  lecture  I  said  that  social  science 
is  the  proxy  of  all  men  in  finding  out  the  mean- 
ing of  life.  Science  is  abortion  until  its  function 
is  complete  in  action.  The  final  justification  for 
more  knowledge  of  the  social  process  is  more 
ability  to  carry  on  the  process  and  to  advance  it 
to  higher  levels. 

Not  in  spite  of  this  estimate,  but  because  of 
it,\J^am  giving  nearly  ten  times  more  attention 
in  these  lectures  to  the  preparatory  stages  of 
social  science  than  to  the  stage  of  application.  I 
do  so  deliberately.  In  my  judgment  scholars 
will  do  most  for  the  ultimate  efficiency  of  social 
science  if,  at  present  at  any  rate,  they  preserve  as 
a  rule  at  least  as  large  a  ratio  as  this  between 
criticism  of  scientific  method  and  attempts  to  put 
such  methods  as  we  have  into  social  experimentTj 

I  shall  say  more  on  this  point  in  a  later  lec- 
ture. In  the  sixth  lecture  I  attempted  to  show 
how  much  and  how  complicated  work  is  involved 
merely  in  stating  the  facts  of  a  brief  passage  in 
human  experience.  But,  as  though  all  this  neces- 
sary description  had  been  accomplished,  scholars 
have  talked  very  freely  for  over  a  century  of 
179 


l8o      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

the  *1aws  of  history."  In  the  rough  they  usually 
mean  by  the  expression  formulations  of  the 
causal  ancestry  of  everything  that  is,  back  to  its 
absolute  beginning.  When  you  come  to  think 
of  it,  in  connection  with  the  schedule  that  I  pre- 
sented in  the  last  lecture  of  the  different  sorts 
of  things  which  must  be  found  out  before  we 
can  even  state  accurately  what  occurred  in  a 
given  case,  to  say  nothing  of  the  causes  and 
effects  of  what  occurred,  how  many  passages  do 
you  suppose  there  are  in  human  experience  that 
have  been  looked  into  with  anything  approaching 
the  thoroughness  demanded?  If  they  have  not 
been  examined  at  least  as  carefully  as  my  illus- 
tration has  presumed,  and  if  facts  enough  have 
not  been  found  in  the  case  of  each  passage  of 
experience  to  answer  the  kind  of  questions  that 
I  have  proposed,  how  do  we  really  know  whether 
the  causal  ancestry  of  anything  has  been  made 
out?  Still  more,  how  do  we  know  general  prin- 
ciples of  cause  and  effect?  If  we  are  not  sure  just 
what  occurred  in  one  case,  nor  of  precisely  why 
it  occurred,  nor  of  the  exact  consequences  of 
what  occurred,  it  is  the  limit  of  four-flushing,  if 
I  may  be  allowed  the  expression,  to  assert  that 
we  know  just  what  occurred,  and  why,  and 
with  what  result,  in  the  hundreds  or  thousands 
or  millions  of  cases  that  would  be  required  to 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  l8l 

indicate  a  general  law.  The  historians  know 
this  better  than  anyone  else,  and  they  have  be- 
come more  suspicious  than  anyone  else — too  sus- 
picious as  I  shall  argue  presently — about  the 
whole  notion  of  "laws"  of  human  experience. 

In  the  case  of  a  great  many  combinations  of 
chemical  elements  we  know  what  regularly 
occurs,  because  these  combinations  have  actually 
been  observed  under  identical  conditions  a  great 
many  times;  and  the  consequences  have  been 
uniform  for  each  combination.  The  statement 
of  these  consequences  for  a  given  combination 
of  elements  and  conditions  is  a  chemical  law. 
We  have  accordingly  a  collection  of  chemical 
laws.  They  exactly  sum  up  recorded  experi- 
ences. 

As  a  result  of  similar  observations  and  ex- 
periments we  have  physical  laws;  that  is,  for- 
mulas of  the  actions  of  masses  of  matter,  or  of 
mechanical  forces,  under  defined  conditions. 
These  laws  too  are  summaries  of  a  great  many 
repetitions  of  the  same  phenomena.  Men  have 
ascertained  just  what  took  place.  They  have 
expressed  what  occurred  in  each  of  those  cases 
in  a  statement  which  is  as  true  for  each  as  for 
any  single  one. 

Now  are  you  sure  that  social  occurrences 
have  ever  been  analyzed  so  thoroughly  that  we 


l82       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

have  the  means  of  knowing  just  what  took  place 
in  a  single  passage  of  human  experience?  If 
you  think  we  have  some  instances  of  such  pre- 
cise knowledge,  are  you  sure  that  we  have  also 
such  precise  knowledge  of  the  conditions  under 
which  a  given  passage  of  social  experience  oc- 
curred that  we  may  pronounce  it  identical  with 
the  conditions  under  which  another  passage  of 
experience  occurred  and  accordingly  may  state 
each  and  all  in  a  form  analogous  with  a  chemi- 
cal equation?  Well,  if  you  think  we  have  such 
similar  specimens  of  human  experience,  how 
many  of  them  do  you  think  it  would  take  to 
make  up  a  "law"  of  human  experience,  and  do 
you  think  we  have  that  many? 

For  instance,  many  people  have  tried  to  study 
out  a  general  theory  of  the  causes  of  revolu- 
tions. In  how  many  distinct  cases  do  you  sup- 
pose the  exact  causes  of  a  single  revolution  have 
been  determined  beyond  a  reasonable  doubt  ?  We 
have  somewhat  elaborate  treatises  on  numerous 
revolutions,  from  the  Semitic  revolt  in  Egypt 
down  to  the  socialistic  riots  in  Spain.  Are  you 
sure  that  we  know  the  precise  combinations  of 
forces  that  produced  a  single  one  of  them? 

One  of  my  colleagues  in  the  history  depart- 
ment told  me  the  other  day  that  he  was  getting 
more  and  more  skeptical  as  to  whether  we  have 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  183 

the  correct  clue  to  the  revolt  of  the  colonies 
against  Great  Britain.  Yet  we  have  been  given 
to  understand  from  childhood  that  the  reasons 
for  that  affair  were  known  beyond  all  doubt! 

Again  the  precise  collision  of  forces  which 
culminated  in  the  war  between  the  states  is  still 
a  matter  of  debate.  We  say  "slavery" ;  we  say 
"state  sovereignty";  we  say  "the"  tariff."  Un- 
questionably men  clashed  because  their  purposes 
ran  counter  to  one  another  with  reference  to 
these  subjects;  but  there  were  millions  of  men 
in  both  sections  who  had  much  more  intimate  con- 
cerns than  any  share  they  had  in  all  these  three 
questions  put  together.  Is  it  very  plausible,  when 
we  stop  to  consider  it,  that  such  remote  matters 
as  slavery,  and  the  tariff,  and  state  sovereignty 
accounted  in  any  precise  way  for  the  actions  of 
the  great  numbers  of  men  who  left  their  fami- 
lies and  their  shops  and  their  professions,  and 
voluntarily  faced  hardships  and  hunger  and  death 
instead  of  pursuing  the  even  tenor  of  their  way? 
Are  not  these  generalizations  rather  obvious 
covers  for  evasion  of  the  problem?  Would  it 
not  be  truer  to  say  something  like  this :  The 
resultants  of  Americans'  actions  on  such  disputed 
questions  as  federal  versus  state  authority,  the 
fixing  of  tariffs,  the  holding  of  slaves,  and  many 
less   conspicuous  matters,   took   such   directions 


l84      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

that  extraordinary  emotions  were  stimulated  in 
people  who  had  relatively  tenuous  relations  to 
these  interests.  Many  men  thought,  felt,  and 
willed  in  unusual  ways ;  their  previous  habits  and 
institutions  ceased  to  be  sufficient  to  control  their 
actions  within  the  customary  peaceful  bounds; 
they  found  no  means  of  adjusting  these  clashing 
impulses  except  force;  but  the  precise  process  of 
this  general  mental  derangement  and  the  selec- 
tion of  means  for  reorganizing  it  are  more  than 
we  have  been  able  to  make  out.  Would  not  this 
really  be  making  a  clean  breast  of  the  superfi- 
ciality of  our  ostensible  explanation?  Do  you 
think  we  have  such  an  accurate  explanation  of 
the  conflict  of  impulses  in  American  minds  before 
the  Civil  War  that  we  could  take  this  knowledge 
to  Spain  or  to  Turkey  or  to  Russia  or  to  China 
and  compare  it  with  someone's  knowledge  of  the 
influences  working  there,  and  as  a  result  of  the 
comparison  could  say  with  authority,  You  will 
or  you  will  not  have  a  civil  war? 

If  you  do,  I  do  not  share  your  belief.  But 
incredulity  on  this  matter  has  gone  much  farther 
than  mine.  It  has  set  a  fashion,  first  of  all  among 
historians  themselves,  especially  in  the  last  gen- 
eration, of  adopting  a  tone  of  superiority  to  the 
whole  notion  of  historical  laws.  I  have  heard 
historians  publicly  deny  that  there  is  any  way 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  185 

of  explaining  historical  occurrences.  It  seems  to 
me  that  the  one  extreme  is  quite  as  premature 
as  the  other. 

We  cannot  explain  experience,  and  we  always 
must  explain  experience. 

Having  said  so  much  in  the  sixth  lecture 
about  the  first  step  in  preparation  for  the  neces- 
sary work  of  describing  the  facts  within  a  given 
area  of  experience,  and  having  now  hinted  at 
the  problems  of  explanation  necessarily  following 
hard  upon  the  descriptive  phase  of  social  science, 
I  must  go  back  a  step  for  a  few  general  reflec- 
tions upon  this  historical  process. 

If  you  put  together  the  titles  of  the  four 
lectures  of  which  this  is  the  second,  you  will 
have  the  chief  methodological  divisions  of  the 
process  of  science,  and  particularly  of  social 
science  as  a  whole.  I  have  assigned  a  lecture  to 
each  division,  or  to  speak  more  precisely  to  each 
chief  phase  of  the  scientific  process.  I  have 
called  these  the  descriptive,  the  analytical,  the 
evaluative,  and  the  constructive  phases. 

I  need  hardly  remark  that  a  reduction  of  all 
the  phases  of  social  science  to  four  calls  for  the 
qualification  that  each  of  these  phases  is  inde- 
scribably complex.  In  fact,  starting  with  the 
simplest  act  of  attention  and  following  on  grade 
by  grade  till  knowledge  reaches  the  most  general 


l86       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

form  of  science,  each  of  these  phases  not  only 
passes  through  ascending  degrees  of  complexity, 
but  at  the  same  time  each  phase  must  be  inces- 
santly connected  with  each  other  phase,  while 
all  are  passing  through  progressing  stages  of 
complexity.  In  general  these  four  phases  of 
science  are  primarily  concerned  :  first,  the  descrip- 
tive, with  the  facts;  second,  the  analytic,  with 
the  connections  of  facts;  third,  the  evaluative, 
with  the  worth  of  the  facts;  fourth,  the  con- 
structive, with  control  of  the  facts.  The  first  two 
of  these  phases  are  historical  in  their  perspective. 
The  first  sets  in  order  past  situations.  This  is 
the  case  even  when  we  are  dealing  with  situa- 
tions which  we  call  present;  for  to  our  minds 
everything  even  of  the  day  and  hour  has  to 
be  reckoned  as  past  when  we  describe  it,  although 
as  I  have  to  observe  in  a  moment  there  is 
another  sense  in  which  we  treat  even  the  remotest 
past  as  present. 

If  this  descriptive  phase  of  science  occurred 
in  isolation,  as  any  verbal  representation  seems 
to  imply,  its  function  would  consist  in  dis- 
playing facts  as  such,  then  other  facts  as  such, 
at  most  representing  them  as  existing  side  by 
side  but  not  allowing  any  relation  of  cause  and 
effect  to  appear.  In  other  words,  the  descrip- 
tive phase  would  be  photographic,  not  rational. 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  187 

For  instance,  if  the  experience  to  be  described 
were  the  American  Revolution,  the  description 
would  be  panoramic  solely,  depicting  the  proces- 
sion of  all  the  events  which  could  be  sketched 
by  portray ers  or  surveyed  by  onlookers  without 
introducing  any  explanation  whatever. 

We  make  use  of  this  phase  of  knowledge  in 
one  of  the  most  primary  forms  in  the  stories  of 
adventure,  in  the  lives  of  heroes,  in  the  accounts 
of  battles,  and  of  other  spectacular  occurrences 
with  which  we  introduce  children  to  history.  But 
in  a  different  way  the  most  critical  history  at- 
tempts to  make  this  phase  of  science  a  distinct 
division  of  its  procedure,  if  not  indeed  its  whole 
procedure.  From  Niebuhr  until  now  in  Germany, 
with  Ranke  as  the  busiest  preceptor,  the  most 
constant  refrain  among  the  historians  has  been 
the  motto,  or  the  commandment,  "What  was,  as 
it  was"  (Was  war,  wie  es  war). 

You  do  not  need  me  to  tell  you  that  this 
separation  of  what  was  as  it  was  from  why  it 
was  has  never  been  and  never  can  be  strictly 
preserved.  Indeed  I  have  never  been  able  to  tell 
how  strictly  the  German  historians  themselves 
distinguished  even  in  ideal  the  "as-it-was"  from 
why  it  was.  Mommsen  probably  succeeded  as 
nearly  as  anybody.  He  ventured  the  fewest  pos- 
sible suppositions  about  causes  in  addition  to  his 


1 88      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

literal  narration  of  facts.  This  is  the  reason 
why  he  is  a  historian's  historian,  while  by  contrast 
Ferrero  today  is  the  general  public's  historian. 
Mommsen  writes  only  what  he  knows,  Ferrero 
would  have  little  reason  to  write  at  all  if  he 
wrote  only  what  he  knew  in  addition  to  what 
other  historians  already  knew.  He  gets  a  voca- 
tion by  costuming  his  conjectures  on  the  stage  of 
the  previously  ascertained. 

Yet  it  is  utterly  impossible  to  separate  the  facts 
of  history  from  real  or  imagined  reasons  to 
account  for  them.  We  have  never  respected  the 
privacy  even  of  the  Sphinx  and  the  pyramids. 
We  have  always  been  been  prying  into  their  story. 
We  may  say  of  our  mind  as  the  old  rule-of- 
thumb  physics  said  of  nature:  It  abhors  a 
vacuum.  We  cannot  tolerate  even  Sphinx  or 
pyramid  isolated  from  the  process  that  produced 
it.  If  no  actual  medium  of  occurrences  pre- 
sents itself  as  the  setting  of  Sphinx  or  pyramid, 
our  minds  inevitably  construct  a  hypothetical 
background.  We  cannot  tell  of  Patrick  Henry 
uttering  his  melodramatic  "Give  me  liberty  or 
give  me  death"  without  supplying  the  episode 
with  a  scene  and  a  plot  which  are  really  our 
explanation  of  the  cause  of  the  occurrence. 

Moreover,  when  we  explain  the  occurrence 
we  inevitably  in  a  way  take  it  out  of  past  time, 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  189 

through  the  process  of  setting  a  value  on  it  in 
the  shape  of  a  judgment  of  the  fitness  or  the  un- 
fitness of  the  means  chosen  to  the  end  in  view, 
and  then  of  generalizing  this  judgment  as  a  tool 
for  dealing  with  similar  situations  likely  to  occur 
in  future  experience.  That  is,  all  the  main  phases 
of  scientific  procedure  are  involved  in  some  lesser 
degree  in  any  description,  just  as  an  act  of  atten- 
tion is  at  the  same  time  an  act  of  feeling  and 
volition. 

The  same  is  true  in  turn  of  the  other  phases. 
Analysis  of  the  causes  of  the  actions  of  the 
American  colonies  from  1774  or  1789  impHes 
and  involves  not  only  previous  description  of 
their  actions,  but  also  some  valuation  of  them 
as  political  wisdom  or  unwisdom,  and  some  con- 
sideration of  them  as  possible  patterns  for  future 
actions  or  as  danger  signals  indicating  actions  to 
be  avoided. 

Most  important  of  all  for  the  final  uses  of 
science,  the  constructive  application  of  knowl- 
edge gets  its  entire  sanction,  so  far  as  it  can  be 
sanctioned  in  advance,  from  the  validity  of  the 
previous  descriptive,  analytical,  and  evaluative 
stages  of  knowledge.  To  the  degree  in  which 
these  elementary  processes  are  assumed  without 
having  been   exhaustively   performed,   the   con- 


IQO       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

structive  programs  which  presuppose  them  are 
gambHngs  with  fate. 

As  I  intimated  when  speaking  of  the  senti- 
mental sociologists  in  an  earlier  lecture,  the  pres- 
ent form  of  sociological  theory  is  an  evolution 
through  a  stage  of  homely  social  science  which 
made  attempts  to  construct,  without  adequate 
previous  attempts  to  understand  the  forces  to  be 
controlled  in  the  construction. 

I  have  thus  been  obliged  both  to  turn  back 
on  my  tracks  and  at  the  same  time  to  get  ahead 
of  my  story.  This  is  because  of  the  perverse 
fact  that  these  knowledge  processes  do  not  fol- 
low one  another  in  a  straight  line  like  the  days  of 
the  week.  They  are  more  like  the  shuttles  in  a 
loom.  All  of  them  have  to  be  in  mind  at  once 
if  we  are  to  understand  what  is  going  on;  yet 
we  have  to  get  acquainted  with  them  by  speak- 
ing of  them  as  though  they  existed  separately 
and  consecutively. 

These  reflections  should  help  us  now  in  re- 
turning to  the  paradox,  We  cannot  explain 
experience,  and  we  always  must  explain  experi- 
ence. 

What  meaning  can  we  put  into  the  paradox? 

To  begin  with  we  probably  have  here,  as  is 
usually  the  case  with  such  contradictions,  a  mis- 
taken  identity   of   ideas   covered   by   the   same 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  191 

words.  Are  the  believers  and  the  disbelievers  in 
historical  laws  talking  about  the  same  thing  when 
they  accept  and  reject  the  notion  ^'explain"?  I 
think  not. 

Do  we  or  do  we  not  ^'explain"  a  Frenchman's 
challenge  to  a  duel  when  we  state  that  another 
Frenchman  has  called  him  a  liar?  Do  we  or 
do  we  not  "explain"  England's  laying  down  two 
battleships  by  discovering  that  just  previously 
Germany  had  laid  down  one  ? 

If  we  mean  by  "explain"  a  discovering  of 
relations  which  would  act  automatically  in  the 
same  way  among  other  men,  we  certainly  can- 
not explain.  We  may  infer  rather  confidently 
from  our  previous  knowledge  of  Frenchmen  what 
one  of  them  of  a  certain  social  class  will  do 
if  he  is  called  a  liar.  From  previous  knowledge 
of  Chinamen  and  Americans  of  a  corresponding 
social  grade  we  know  that  in  their  case  the 
same  provocation  would  be  followed  by  different 
action.  We  know  enough  about  Englishmen  to 
be  tolerably  well  assured  that  if  the  Germans  lay 
down  one  battleship  the  English  will  lay  down 
two;  but  at  the  same  time  we  are  equally  safe 
in  concluding  that  if  Sweden  or  Norway  or 
Russia  should  lay  down  two  battleships  under 
present  circumstances  neither  Spain  nor  Italy  nor 


192       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

the  United  States  would  for  that  reason  lay  down 
even  one. 

That  is,  we  find  that  certain  men  act  in  cer- 
tain ways  under  the  influence  of  certain  stimuli. 
We  may  not  be  able  to  go  very  far  toward  find- 
ing out  why  these  stimuli  are  followed  by  the 
action.  We  simply  know  the  fact.  We  do  not 
know  why  like  stimuli  in  the  case  of  other 
men  produce  unlike  response.  Again  we  simply 
know  the  fact.  If  we  mean  by  explanation 
going  back  of  the  observed  sequels  of  antece- 
dents to  explain  why  those  antecedents  are  fol- 
lowed by  consequences,  our  ability  may  be  very 
narrowly  limited.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  mean 
by  explanation  assorting  the  variations  of  cir- 
cumstances in  which  men  have  been  known  to  be 
placed,  and  the  variations  of  activities  which 
they  have  been  known  to  perform  under  the  stim- 
ulus of  the  circumstances,  and  then  if  we  mean 
by  explanation  associating  the  particular  actions 
of  men  whom  we  are  studying  with  all  the  sur- 
rounding circumstances  which  can  be  ascertained, 
and,  in  so  far  as  there  is  any  known  precedent 
for  similar  conduct  under  similar  circumstances, 
inferring  that  the  relation  between  antecedent 
and  consequent  was  the  same  in  the  two  cases, 
and  that  the  same  sequence  will  probably  occur 
wherever  there  is  the  same  reaction — if  this  is 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  193 

what  we  mean  by  explanation,  then  it  is  alto- 
gether probable  that  men  will  go  on  to  the  end 
of  time  becoming  more  and  more  explicit  in 
explaining  experience. 

To  approach  a  translation  of  my  paradox, 
then,  I  resort  to  a  plain  commonplace,  viz. :  Men 
form  valuations,  and  their  conduct  is  always  in 
the  line  of  one  or  more  valuations,  or  in  a  line 
pointed  out  by  an  accommodation  of  two  or  more 
valuations. 

Do  not  take  this  as  merely  a  repetition  of 
the  formula  of  the  fifth  lecture:  Men's  experi- 
ence is  the  evolution  of  human  values.  We  must 
distinguish  between  these  twO'  concepts  "values" 
and  "valuations."  The  one  is  objective,  the  other 
subjective.  Physical  prowess,  habits  of  industry, 
capacity  for  self-government  are  human  values. 
Estimates  of  such  things,  whether  before  or  after 
the  event,  appraisals  of  their  worth,  are  valua- 
tions. Values  are  the  output  of  the  human  pro- 
cess in  the  shape  of  achievement  organized  into 
personality.  Valuations  are  the  power  generators 
that  keep  the  process  of  achievement  in  action. 
Relatively  to  the  last  term  .in  the  social  process 
which  we  can  understand,  valuations  are  causes; 
values  are  effects. 

For  the  benefit  of  scholars  who  might  insist 
on    a    certain    technical    meaning    of    the    term 


194       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

"valuation,"  I  must  explain  that  I  do  not  use  it 
as  a  name  merely  for  the  conscious  process  of 
balancing  evidence  and  arriving  at  a  logical 
judgment.  By  "valuations"  I  mean  all  sorts  of 
preferences  of  this  for  that.  They  may  be  con- 
genital. They  may  be  reflexive.  They  may  be 
sheer  habit.  They  may  be  deliberate  judgments. 
I  am  simply  going  back  to  the  fact  that  men 
hold  certain  things  as  desirable,  certain  alterna- 
tive things  as  undesirable.  I  call  each  of  these 
preferences  a  "valuation,"  whether  the  process 
of  arriving  at  it  was  more  or  less  intellectual  in 
the  strict  sense. 

It  is  the  psychologists'  affair  to  go  as  far  as 
they  can,  not  merely  toward  making  out  the  dif- 
ferences between  the  least  conscious  and  the  most 
conscious  valuations,  but  also  toward  explain- 
ing how  valuations  pass  from  mere  valuations 
into  visible  actions.  For  instance,  a  tribe  holds 
a  valuation  of  a  stretch  of  land  as  its  hunting- 
ground,  i.e.,  as  the  source  of  its  food  supply.  In 
this  case  the  valuation  of  the  hunting-ground  is 
as  the  valuation  of  the  food  supply.  In  the  ab- 
sence of  counterbalancing  valuations  the  tribe 
will  resist  encroachment  upon  this  hunting- 
ground.  In  another  age  many  men  form  valua- 
tions of  an  anticipated  condition  after  death  as 
more  desirable   than   any   comfort   in  this   life. 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  195 

Their  program  accordingly  becomes  renuncia- 
tion now  and  hope  of  a  more  than  compensating 
hereafter.  In  another  age  some  men's  valuations 
center  upon  money  and  the  power  that  money 
brings.  Thereupon  for  them  everything  is  worth 
what  it  is  worth  as  a  money-getter.  In  each 
case  we  have  abundant  instances  of  the  fact. 
We  know  less  about  the  psychological  process  of 
the  fact. 

Accordingly  a  second  commonplace  is  not  so 
universally  accepted,  namely :  Human  valuations 
produce  all  human  conduct. 

If  I  am  challenged  to  tell  what  the  word  ''pro- 
duce" means  in  this  connection — and  there  is  a 
certain  propriety  in  the  challenge — I  frankly 
admit  that  I  do  not  know.  That  is,  I  have  no 
solution  of  the  remoter  problem  implied  in  the 
challenge.  Again  I  should  go  to  the  psycholo- 
gists to  find  out  how  much  they  have  learned, 
and  what  the  prospects  are  of  learning  more 
about  the  subjective  process  behind  the  objective 
sequence.  As  I  use  the  term  ''produce"  here, 
however,  it  has  an  essentially  interrogative  force, 
for  the  purpose  of  the  inquiry  which  the  chal- 
lenge calls  for,  in  the  same  sense  in  which  the 
phrase  "natural  selection"  is  virtually  interroga- 
tive in  a  formula  of  evolution.  I  explained  this 
sense  in  the  fifth  lecture.     For  instance,  I  reach 


196       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

the  valuation  of  a  certain  otherwise  meaningless 
gesture  as  serviceable  for  my  present  purpose. 
Having  this  valuation,  I  use  the  gesture.  I  do 
not  fully  know  the  process  which  intervenes  in 
my  consciousness  between  my  arrival  at  the 
valuation  of  the  gesture  and  my  use  of  it;  but 
I  know  that  my  valuation  came  before  the  ges- 
ture, and  that  the  gesture  would  be  unthinkable 
without  the  valuation.  I  do  not  use  the  word 
''produce"  as  a  substitute  for  knowledge  which  I 
do  not  have  of  the  process  between  the  valuation 
and  the  gesture.  I  use  it  for  the  knowledge 
which  I  do  have,  viz.,  that,  in  the  absence  of 
strong  inhibition  in  the  form  either  of  force  or  of 
counterbalancing  valuations,  the  gesture  will  im- 
mediately follow  the  valuation  that  it  will  be 
serviceable. 

That  is,  we  cannot  give  an  exhaustive  psy- 
chological or  metaphysical  explanation  of  why 
there  was  a  servile  revolt  at  Rome  and  no  servile 
revolt  in  our  southern  states.  We  do  know  that 
wherever  a  population  consists  of  part  privileged 
part  unprivileged  there  are  valuations  of  that 
arrangement  on  both  sides  of  it,  and  these  valua- 
tions make  for  corresponding  actions.  What- 
ever happens,  we  are  justified  in  keeping  our  eye 
on  the  fact  of  men's  appraisal  of  privilege  and 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  197 

unprivilege  as  one  of  the  clues,  at  any  rate,  to 
subsequent  events. 

We  do  not  know  why  some  men  will  sell 
their  souls  for  money  and  why  there  is  not 
money  enough  in  the  world  to  buy  some  other 
men.  Mysterious  as  either  extreme  is,  it  leaves 
us  with  the  general  knowledge  that  estimates  of 
the  value  of  money  are  among  the  variants  of 
men's  actions.  If  two  men  or  two  groups  of 
men  differ  about  money,  we  may  safely  infer 
that  some  part  of  their  subsequent  conduct 
toward  each  other  has  its  impulse  in  the  estimate 
at  which  money  is  held  in  their  scale  of  goods. 
If  one  group  of  men  has  religious  beliefs  which 
usually  express  themselves  in  certain  types  of 
conduct,  and  another  group  has  beliefs  which  go 
along  with  other  types  of  conduct,  we  may  not 
be  able  to  pry  beyond  the  existence  of  these 
habits,  but  it  would  not  be  worth  while  to  doubt 
that  if  these  groups  have  to  live  together  the 
respective  valuations  of  the  peculiar  habits  will 
register  themselves  in  corresponding  actions  and 
reactions  between  the  groups. 

Now  it  is  the  veriest  platitude  among  all  who 
have  given  the  slightest  thought  to  human  experi- 
ence that  men  who  may  be  of  help  to  one  another 
in  gaining  ends  settle  in  groups  accordingly. 
Nobody  had  thought  that  this  fact  would  repay 


198       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

very  close  study  till  the  sociologists  took  it  up. 
It  grew  on  the  sociologists,  however,  that  this 
phenomenon — the  formation  of  functional  groups 
or  valuation  groups — deserved  much  more  atten- 
tion than  it  had  received.  When  the  sociologists 
win  their  case,  as  they  will  some  time  unless  men 
stop  thinking,  it  will  be  another  instance  of  the 
stone  which  the  builders  refused  becoming  the 
head  of  the  corner.  If  the  plan  of  these  lectures 
permitted  me  to  go  into  such  minutiae,  this  would 
be  the  point  where  I  should  have  to  show  how  the 
problems  of  explanation  or  analysis  presented  by 
partial  description  of  human  experience  led  to 
general  sociology,  and  then  to  social  psychology. 
If  I  were  speaking  to  sociologists  or  psycholo- 
gists particularly,  I  should  have  to  explain  what 
I  understand  by  this  subdivision.  For  the  sake 
of  simplicity  I  ignore  the  subdivision  and  use 
only  the  term  sociology. 

We  may  know  individual  valuations  and 
group  valuations  in  the  same  sense  in  which  we 
know  specific  gravity.  It  does  not  seem  probable 
that  we  shall  ever  be  able  to  measure  individual 
or  group  valuations  as  accurately  as  we  can 
measure  the  specific  gravity  of  physical  bodies. 
Professor  Giddings  is  working  on  a  "social  mark- 
ing system,"  and  he  has  developed  an  apparatus 
for  making  some  of  our  measurements  of  valua- 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  199 

tions  more  precise  than  they  have  been.  It  is  not 
too  much  to  expect  that  more  progress  is  to  be 
made  in  this  direction.  Whatever  approaches 
we  may  make  in  the  future,  however,  to  adequate 
standards  of  social  weights  and  measures,  it  will 
of  course  always  be  true  that  human  valuations 
are  less  constant  than  specific  gravity.  In  the 
first  place,  enemies  of  today  are  allies  tomorrow. 
Groups  that  have  been  militant  in  their  valua- 
tions adopt  industrial  valuations  just  as  indi- 
viduals as  they  grow  older  change  their  leading 
valuations  from  sport  to  business,  and  to  politics, 
and  to  art,  and  again  to  other  sport,  etc.  In  the 
second  place,  as  Professor  James  says,  men 
"energize"  differently.  In  this  respect  there  are 
contrasts  both  between  persons  and  persons  and 
between  the  same  person  at  different  times. 
Ratzenhofer's  scale  of  these  energizings  was : 
positive  moderate;  comparative  radical;  super- 
lative irreconcilable.  That  is,  one  of  our  cal- 
culations always  has  to  do  with  the  ratio  in  a 
given  case  of  those  whose  energizing  is  ex- 
hausted by  an  academic  statement  of  their  valua- 
tion, those  who  will  work  for  it,  and  those  who 
will  go  to  the  last  ditch  for  it.  The  phenomena 
of  panics,  of  political  elections,  of  religious 
revivals,     with     the     corresponding     reactions. 


200      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

readily  come  to  mind  as  illustrations  of  the  fluc- 
tuating force  of  valuations. 

Discounting  then  all  these  elements  of  in- 
exactness, we  still  have  the  most  searching  clue 
to  analysis  and  explanation  of  human  experi- 
ence in  ascertainable  valuations  and  their  modes 
of  action.  We  need  have  no  fear,  by  the  way, 
that  the  use  of  this  clue  will  entangle  us  with  the 
old  dialectical  puzzle :  Does  action  always  fol- 
low the  strongest  motive  ?  That  is  a  quite  differ- 
ent problem.  The  chief  sociological  contribution 
to  the  methodology  of  social  science  consists,  in  a 
word,  in  emphasizing  the  implications  of  the 
^  fact  that  human  valuations  are  the  efficient  social 
forces.  These  implications  may  be  summed  up 
in  a  simple  proposition:  To  explain  human  ex- 
perience it  is  necessary  to  know  human  valua- 
tions and  their  workings. 

For  lifting  this  perception  above  the  threshold 
of  consciousness  social  science  owes  more  to  the 
author  of  Dynamic  Sociology  than  to  any  other 
man.  I  express  this  judgment  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  in  my  opinion  Professor  Ward's  elabora- 
tion of  the  thesis,  psychic  forces  are  the  true 
causes  of  all  social  phenomena,  makes  the  actual 
human  process  much  simpler  than  it  really  is. 
Just  as  the  Kantian  ethics  makes  virtue  a  func- 
tion of   impossibly  abstracted   will,   so   Ward's 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  20l 

sociology  makes  the  social  process  a  function 
of  impossibly  abstracted  cognition.^  This  slurs 
over  the  processes  of  attention  and  valuation  too 
much,  not  only  from  the  psychological  stand- 
point, but  from  the  sociological  as  well. 

These  are  details,  however,  which  need  not 
confuse  us  in  making  a  preliminary  survey  of  the 
analytical  phase  of  social  science. 

If  I  correctly  apprehend  what  men  have 
meant  as  a  rule  when  they  have  talked  either 
pro  or  con  about  the  ''laws"  of  history,  the 
notion  has  usually  been  of  a  way  of  making  out 
an  unbroken  causal  series  by  which,  for  instance, 
a  given  act  of  Congress  in  the  year  1910  may  be 
referred  back,  step  by  step  from  nearer  effects  to 
remoter  causes,  until  it  begins  in  some  initial 
cause  in  Witanagemot  or  Roman  Senate  or 
Amphictionic  Council.  Even  if  we  believe 
that  there  is  such  a  relationship  between  the 
present  and  the  past — and  I  am  unable  to 
understand  how  anyone  who  professes  to  hold 
the  evolutionary  rather  than  the  creationary 
conception  of  experience  can  suppose  anything 
else — it  would  be  an  exceptionally  credu- 
lous person  who  could  imagine  that  we  might 

*  I  am  aware  that  this  proposition  seems  to  contradict 
Ward's  theses  in  terms  of  feeling.  I  nevertheless  believe  that 
my  objection  is  valid. 


202       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

ever  in  a  single  instance  identify  the  steps  in  such 
a  succession.  If  by  explaining  human  experi- 
ence such  a  superhuman  piece  of  detective  work 
is  meant,  I  am  acquainted  with  no  one  who  would 
contend  for  the  possibility.  A  proposed  ''law  of 
history"  hypothecated  upon  alleged  knowledge 
of  such  a  sequence  would  be  less  plausible,  if 
anything  could  be,  than  those  genealogies  which 
people  with  more  money  than  sense  of  historic 
probability  pay  fakirs  to  trace  back  to  the  Con- 
queror or  to  Charlemagne.  Such  a  conception 
of  explaining  experience  is  like  asking  a  biolo- 
gist to  prove  that  there  has  been  a  process  of 
the  differentiation  of  species  by  tracing  back  the 
chemical  elements  of  which  his  own  body  is 
composed  through  all  their  mutations  to  the  spot 
and  the  state  in  which  they  existed  when  animal 
life  first  appeared. 

But  there  is  a  quite  different  conception  of 
explaining  experience.  It  does  not  contemplate 
reconstruction  of  the  items  of  the  life  of  men 
from  first  to  last.  Its  aim  is  to  make  out  the 
process  of  social  life,  whatever  be  the  particular 
passage  of  experience  to  be  explained.  In  this 
it  is  attempting  something  analogous  with  the 
attempt  of  the  physiologist  to  determine  exactly 
what  is  going  on  at  a  given  time  in  a  living 
organism,  whether  it  is  normal  or  pathological. 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  203 

The  physiologist  does  not  try  to  find  out  the 
cosmic  record  of  each  atom  in  that  aggregate  of 
material  previous  to  its  entrance  into  the  organ- 
ism. He  tries  to  find  out  what  the  tissues  are 
now  doing  as  parts  of  the  organism. 

In  the  lowest  terms  that  I  can  find  for  it 
without  going  beyond  my  depth  in  psychology, 
the  social  process  is  this:  forming  valuations; 
seeking  means  to  realize  valuations;  in  the  seek- 
ing, whether  successful  or  not,  modifying  the 
valuations;  again  seeking  means  to  realize  the 
changed  valuations ;  and  so  on  beyond  any  limit 
that  we  can  imagine.  In  other  words,  considered 
on  its  process  side  human  experience  is  an  in- 
creasingly involved  rhythm  of  choosing  ends 
and  choosing  means  to  attain  them,  the  choosers 
being  themselves  more  or  less  reconstructed  in 
the  process. 

Thereupon  the  problem  of  explaining  human 
experience  in  general,  or  a  select  passage  of  it, 
may  be  reduced  to  a  pattern  question  that  in  form 
is  simple  enough :  What  was  the  body  of  valua- 
tions held  by  the  men  concerned,  and  what  was 
the  scheme  of  means  on  which  they  relied  to 
realize  the  valuations? 

That  is,  our  clue  to  the  universal  process  of 
the  evolution  of  human  values  is  that  the  ele- 
ments of  the  process  are  everywhere  generically 


204      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

the  same.  They  are  always  on  the  one  hand 
men's  valuations  of  things  worth  doing,  and  on 
the  other  hand  men's  devices  for  doing  the  things. 
Each  of  these  two  elements  is  functionally  of  one 
pattern.  Each  is  merely  more  complex  in  ap- 
paratus in  the  British  empire  for  instance  than 
in  a  Bushman's  village. 

If  you  feel  moved  to  criticize  to  the  effect 
that  what  I  have  been  saying  bears  not  the  faint- 
est trace  of  novelty;  that  poets  and  philosophers 
from  Homer  and  Plato  down  have  rung  the 
changes  on  it  in  countless  more  attractive  ways; 
that  hundreds  of  American  school  boys  repeat  it, 
and  thousands  hear  it  at  every  graduation  season 
in  some  variation  of  the  theme  *'Ideas  make  the 
world" — if  you  think  this  rejoinder  states  facts, 
I  shall  enter  no  denial.  You  are  right  but  you 
are  not  pertinent.  If  all  the  barren  common- 
places abroad  in  the  world  should  suddenly  get 
the  attention  they  deserve,  I  know  not  how  many 
generations  of  human  evolution  would  be  re- 
quired before  men's  ideals  could  so  nearly  catch 
up  with  reality  that  they  could  see  any  room  for 
further  improvement.  If  all  our  commonplaces 
were  worked  to  their  limit,  they  would  amount  to 
all  the  heaven  we  could  understand.  It  is  true; 
the  only  original  thing  about  the  sociologists* 
statement  of  this  commonplace  is  that  the  sociolo- 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  205 

gists  seriously  propose  to  follow  it  up  and  to  find 
out  how  efficient  a  guide  it  is  to  explanation  of 
experience.  The  chief  source  of  all  human  woes, 
in  our  age  at  least,  is  that  we  do  not  live  up  to 
our  commonplaces.  This  is  almost  as  true  in 
science  as  it  is  in  morals.  It  is  conspicuously 
true  in  this  instance.  Instead  of  making  a  ven- 
ture in  mysticism,  as  has  been  pretty  generally 
supposed,  the  sociologists  have  been  literal 
enough  to  take  the  commonplace  at  its  word 
and  to  resolve  that  they  will  get  all  the  instruc- 
tion possible  from  its  guidance.  The  sociolo- 
gists have  assented  to  everybody's  knowledge. 
"Yes,  people  do  form  valuations,"  say  the  soci- 
ologists; "they  do  grope  after  means  to  realize 
them;  they  do  arrange  themselves  in  groups  in 
the  course  of  this  groping;  they  do  make  their 
groups  tools  in  the  service  of  their  valuations; 
and  this  is  the  process  that  we  discover  when- 
ever we  cast  our  eyes  abroad  upon  men,  whether 
the  nature  peoples  or  our  neighbors.  Go  to, 
now!  We  will  take  knowledge  of  these  valua- 
tions and  these  f unctionings ;  we  will  do  it  by 
system;  we  will  do  it  from  one  end  of  the  scale 
of  the  process  to  the  other;  and  in  this  knowl- 
edge of  groups  valuing,  and  groups  functioning 
in  the  line  of  their  valuations,  and  thus  trans- 
forming themselves  through  striving  to  realize 


2o6       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

their  valuations,  we  will  get  more  insight  than 
has  ever  before  been  gained  into  the  meaning  of 
human  experience." 

A  few  years  ago  the  head  of  the  department 
of  economics  in  one  of  our  largest  universities 
volunteered  the  remark  to  me :  "In  my  opinion, 
Professor  Thomas  has  staked  out  the  richest 
pay-dirt  at  present  under  claim  anywhere  in 
social  science."  I  was  so  delighted  at  this  symp- 
tom that  I  took  no  risk  of  interrupting  the 
progress  of  ideas  by  venturing  any  leading  ques- 
tions. As  Professor  Thomas'  Source  Book  of 
Social  Origins  has  since  made  plain,  however,  he 
has  simply  been  working  out  a  more  penetrating 
method  than  had  been  used  before  for  getting  a 
concrete  content  and  form  for  an  idea  which 
had  been  a  rather  vacant  generality.  Many  less 
specific  analyses,  like  Professor  Eucken's  Ruling 
Ideas  of  Ancient  Times  or  the  Duke  of  Argyle's 
Unseen  Foundations  of  Society,  have  been  al- 
most within  striking  distance  of  the  same  method. 
Herbert  Spencer's  rather  unfortunately  misno- 
mered  Principles  of  Sociology  had  improved  the 
method.  In  its  aim  more  than  its  technique  Pro- 
fessor Sumner's  Folkways  was  an  application  of 
the  same  idea  which  Professor  Thomas  is  de- 
veloping. But  Sumner  and  Thomas  have  merely 
furnished  early  samples  of  the   sort  of  social 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  207 

analysis  which  was  foreshadowed  by  Comte's 
prospectus  of  sociology.  General  sociology  is 
first  of  all  the  elaboration  of  categories  as  tools 
for  such  analysis,  and  then  it  is  a  beginning  of 
the  use  of  these  tools  for  purposes  of  social 
explanation. 

In  the  sixth  lecture  I  supposed,  for  the  sake 
of  illustration,  that  a  body  of  scholars  from  all 
the  departments  of  social  science  had  so  far 
recognized  the  force  of  the  argument  here  out- 
lined as  to  form  themselves  into  an  institute  for 
co-operative  investigation  of  human  experience. 
I  did  not  raise  the  question  at  all  what  work  they 
might  best  undertake,  because  that  would  have 
carried  me  away  from  the  treatment  of  prin- 
ciples to  a  specific  application  of  the  principles; 
and  about  this  opinions  might  greatly  differ.  As 
my  subject  was  the  descriptive  phase  of  social 
science,  I  further  supposed  for  the  sake  of  more 
definite  illustration  that  the  experience  chosen 
for  description  was  that  of  Frenchmen  during 
the  forty  years  following  the  accession  of  Louis 
XVI.  I  have  been  told  meanwhile  that  I  was 
understood  to  imply  that  it  would  make  no 
difference  what  passage  of  experience  such  an 
institute  chose  to  investigate;  that  one  would  be 
as  important  as  another;  or  else  that  in  my 
opinion   the   French   Revolution   was   the   most 


2o8       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

important  portion  of  human  experience  for 
scholars  to  study.  I  take  this  opportunity  to  cor- 
rect that  impression.  It  would  be  utter  and 
inexcusable  waste  of  opportunity  for  such  an  in- 
stitute to  put  its  force  upon  some  parts  of  human 
experience.  On  the  other  hand,  there  may  be  a 
great  many  reasons  why  such  an  institute  would 
not  be  making  the  best  use  of  its  strength  even 
if  it  chose  to  study  such  an  intensely  instruct- 
ive period  as  that  of  the  French  Revolution. 
I  hope  this  statement  will  make  it  clear  that  when 
I  am  using  purely  hypothetical  illustrations  I  am 
not  laying  down  rules  of  procedure. 

I  feel  bound  under  the  circumstances  to  repeat 
the  same  precautionary  statement  in  connection 
with  the  illustration  which  follows.  It  may  be 
conceivable  to  some  minds  that  our  institute  of 
social  science  might  devote  its  earliest  years  to 
the  perfecting  of  the  sociological  categories  of 
description.  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  anything 
one  way  or  another  about  the  wisdom  of  such  a 
decision.  Without  asking  you  to  overtax  your 
imagination  by  assuming  such  a  choice  on  the 
part  of  the  institute,  I  merely  say  that  progress 
in  explaining  human  experience  will  very  nearly 
keep  step  with  progress  in  making  out  valua- 
tion groups  in  their  ascending  orders  of  com- 
plexity and  the   functionings  which  take  place 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  209 

in  and  between  those  groups,  as  their  valuations 
and  their  machineries  for  realizing  them  assume 
varied  characters.  Someone  must  do  the  work 
of  analyzing  human  situation  after  situation  in 
terms  of  valuations  and  of  energizings  in  pur- 
suance of  the  valuations ;  otherwise  social  science 
will  come  to  a  halt  at  the  point  where  its  chief 
efficiency  should  begin. 

It  is  in  this  connection  that  pioneerings  such 
as  those  of  Sumner  and  Thomas  are  signifi- 
cant. They  have  relations  to  social  science  as 
a  whole  closely  resembling  those  of  Professor 
Loeb's  studies  of  micro-organisms  to  human 
physiology.  The  folk  psychology  of  the  nature 
peoples  is  merely  the  child  psychology  of  the 
race.  It  is  study  of  the  universal  processes  of 
evaluating  and  energizing  in  the  most  rudi- 
mentary forms  in  which  they  may  be  found. 
This  rudimentary  knowledge  is  our  initial  guide 
in  analyzing  the  maturest  forms  of  the  same  pro- 
cesses which  we  anywhere  encounter. 

But  there  are  ascending  orders  of  complexity 
in  group  psychology,  just  as  there  are  in  the 
zoological  series.  We  have  the  task  therefore  of 
analyzing  the  successive  species  of  social  types 
from  the  least  complex  to  the  most  complex. 
The  reason  is  not  merely  that  we  can  learn  in 
this  way  only  the  actual  processes  of  the  high- 


2IO       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

est  present  social  group,  but  also  that  the  inter- 
mediate types  recur  within  the  great  societies 
of  our  own  civilization. 

Preparation  for  research  in  social  science  is 
therefore  in  a  sense  analogous  with  prepara- 
tion for  the  practice  of  medicine.  At  one  stage 
the  sort  of  experience  necessary  is  comparable 
with  the  study  of  elementary  biology.  At 
another  stage  description  of  relatively  simple 
ancient  groups  is  in  order,  which  may  be  com- 
pared with  dissection  of  the  cadaver.  Still  later 
one  is  able  to  profit  by  analysis  of  social  experi- 
ence in  recent  times  in  situations  quite  closely 
resembling  those  of  the  present.  This  may  be 
likened  to  attending  a  clinic.  Then  comes  the 
actual  learning  by  joining  in  current  affairs, 
which  is  like  the  work  of  an  interne.  Latest  of 
all  and  analogous  with  medical  practice  itself, 
there  may  be  responsible  attempts  to  control  the 
conditions  of  social  health  and  disease. 

That  is,  our  conception  of  social  explanation 
does  not  make  it  like  attempting  to  account  for 
the  last  child  born  in  terms  of  all  his  progeni- 
tors back  to  primordial  protoplasm.  We  think 
of  it  rather  as  like  trying  to  express  the  child 
in  terms  of  all  that  we  have  learned  about  physi- 
ological processes  in  general — the  organizing  of 
cells  into  tissues,  and   tissues    into    organs,  and 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  2li 

organs  into  functions,  and  functions  into  growth, 
and  growth  into  power.  Thus  the  men  who  are 
beginning  to  get  a  *'body"  for  sociology,  as  Pro- 
fessor Ross  expresses  it,  are  really  furnishing 
sample  analyses  of  selected  social  groups;  and 
similar  and  more  complex  analyses  must  be  made 
of  every  social  group  so  far  as  we  undertake  to 
explain  its  experience  at  all.  How  rapidly  it 
will  be  possible  to  make  such  attempts  convin- 
cing no  one  can  foresee.  Noteworthy  efforts  at 
such  explanation  are  the  studies  of  Mr.  Louis 
Wallis  on  the  experience  of  the  Hebrew  nation, 
published  in  the  fourteenth  volume  of  the  Ameri- 
can Journal  of  Sociology  under  the  title,  *'Bib- 
Hcal  Sociology";  a  study  of  a  typical  modern 
situation  by  Professor  Williams,  reported  in  the 
American  Journal  of  Sociology  for  May,  1910, 
under  the  title,  ''Outline  of  a  Theory  of  Social 
Motives."  If  one  wants  an  incisive  criticism  of 
the  process  involved  in  arriving  at  such  valua- 
tions, Dr.  Arthur  F.  Bentley's  book  entitled  The 
Process  of  Government  should  be  read.  In  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  book  laboriously  misunder- 
stands all  the  sociologists,  it  would  repay  much 
m.ore  attention  than  it  has  received. 

Anyone  looking  for  a  leading-string  through 
the  whole  maze  of  sociological  technicalities  may 
find  it  in  what  I  have  said  in  this  lecture,  pro- 


212       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

vided  one  is  prepared  to  make  the  application, 
like  the  biologists  and  the  electrical  engineers 
we  have  seemed  to  the  onlooker  to  have  been 
more  successful  in  producing  vocabularies  that 
called  for  the  remaking  of  dictionaries  than  in 
really  enlarging  knowledge.  In  fact  our  work  is 
not  for  the  words  but  the  words  for  the  work. 
We  have  to  differentiate  terms  of  structure  and 
function  and  process,  to  go  along  with  our 
increasing  insight  into  the  differentiating  phe- 
nomena of  structure  and  function  and  process 
in  men's  experience.  It  may  be  that  our  present 
apparatus  of  concepts  and  words  for  them  will 
look  as  insufficient  to  men  a  hundred  years  hence 
as  eighteenth-century  physical  and  physiological 
terms  now  look  to  us. 

Meanwhile  this  is  the  actual  frontier  of  social 
science  today :  We  have  the  clue  that  men  valu- 
ing and  combining  their  efforts  in  the  line  of 
their  valuations  are  the  elements  of  all  social  expe- 
rience. We  have  to  learn  how  to  recognize  men's 
valuings  and  to  state  their  actions  in  terms  of 
them,  from  the  most  simple  to  the  most  involved. 
We  have  to  learn  all  we  can  about  the  function- 
ings  in  the  most  primary  human  groups  which 
we  can  trace,  in  which  all  the  visible  valuations 
may  possibly  be  reduced  to  the  food  and  sex 
wants;  and  we  have  to  expand  that  knowledge 


THE  ANALYTICAL  PHASE  213 

to  correspond  with  each  lengthening  of  the  gamut 
of  men's  vahiations  and  devices. 

The  phases  of  the  scientific  process  to  be  dis- 
cussed in  the  next  two  lectures  are  so  intimately 
interwoven  with  this  analytic  phase  that  I  must 
anticipate  something  which  will  have  to  be  re- 
peated, namely:  All  that  we  can  do  in  the  way 
of  explaining  past  experience  has  its  chief  value 
in  fitting  us  for  description  and  analysis  of  the 
passing  situation,  and  then  for  shaping  scientific 
conclusions  so  that  they  will  most  effectively  pass 
into  promotion  of  the  present  human  processes. 
While  I  am  obliged  to  discuss  these  abstracted 
phases  of  science  as  though  they  had  a  detach- 
able existence  and  an  independent  and  co-ordi- 
nate value,  this  is  not  the  fact.  Each  of  these 
phases  is  worth  what  it  is  worth  as  a  means  to 
the  whole  process  of  science;  and  science  itself 
is  worth  merely  what  it  is  worth  as  a  means  to 
the  end  of  completer  human  experience.  Our 
whole  scientific  methodology  must  at  last  be 
adjusted  to  this  outlook.  Our  knowledge  pro- 
cesses must  be  organized  with  reference  to  the 
scale  of  values  of  things  to  be  known.  The 
standard  of  that  scale  will  be  the  sort  of  knowl- 
edge demanded  by  the  things  to  do. 


LECTURE  VIII 

THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

One  of  the  darling  dogmas  of  modern  scien- 
tific purism  is  that  in  dealing  with  facts  judg- 
ments of  the  values  of  the  facts  must  be  strangled. 
It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  very  clear  case  of  strict 
obedience  to  the  dogma,  yet  it  stands  high  in 
the  formal  scientific  code.  Of  course  it  is  the 
opposite  swing  of  the  thought  pendulum  from 
the  method  of  conscienceless  homiletical  im- 
pressment of  snap  judgments  about  facts  into 
the  service  of  opinion.  One  cannot  draw 
accurate  boundaries  for  such  tendencies  in  a 
sentence,  but  it  is  within  limits  to  say  that 
this  "edifying"  way  of  treating  supposed  facts, 
to  the  prejudice  of  valid  description  and  analy- 
sis, was  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception  in 
the  eighteenth  century.  The  coming  of  criti- 
cism to  its  own  in  the  nineteenth  century  might 
be  described  with  some  approach  to  fairness  as 
an  inversion  of  the  order  of  prominence  pre- 
viously assigned  to  description  on  the  one  hand 
and  to  evaluation  on  the  other.  The  older  method 
went  so  far  that  it  permitted  valuations  to 
create  their  own  facts.  The  reaction  went  so  far 
that  it  invaded  the  right  of  facts  to  be  evaluated. 
214 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  215 

The  historical  criticism  which  by  somewhat 
general  consent  is  dated  from  Niebuhr  is  in  prin- 
ciple a  repudiation  of  previous  prescriptive  right 
of  opinion  to  create  its  own  evidence.  This  criti- 
cism did  not  at  once  go  to  the  other  extreme  of 
excluding  evaluation  from  the  scientific  process. 
It  served  notice  that  the  evaluating  process  might 
no  longer  be  allowed  to  settle  the  facts  and  their 
meanings  in  advance.  It  demanded  the  right  of 
way  for  description  and  analysis.  The  facts  and 
their  connections  having  been  determined,  then 
the  new  criticism  not  merely  admitted  the  right 
of  evaluation  but  insisted  upon  the  exercise  of  the 
right;  otherwise  there  would  have  been  no  suffi- 
cient reason  for  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  at  all. 

I  presume  that  I  have  said  enough  in  the  last 
two  lectures  on  the  general  principle  that  the  four 
main  phases  of  the  scientific  process  which  I 
have  distinguished  are  all  necessarily  involved, 
in  some  form  and  degree,  in  every  actual  scientific 
process.  I  am  now  concerned  therefore  to  indi- 
cate some  of  the  important  marks  of  this  third 
phase  of  the  process — not  necessarily  third  in 
time,  not  necessarily  third  in  rank  in  a  given 
problem,  but  third  in  that  order  of  precedence 
which  we  call  "logical"  when  we  attempt  to  repre- 
sent experience  in  words. 

'^When  a  human  device  loses  any  part  of  its 


2l6      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

character  as  a  tool,  and  takes  on  any  of  the 
character  of  a  ritual,  it  begins  to  be  tyrannical. 
Each  increase  in  the  ratio  of  the  ritualistic  to 
the  functional  in  the  use  of  the  device  threatens 
the  genuineness  of  the  process.  If  time  allowed, 
I  should  be  glad  to  present  evidence  in  support  ^ 
of  the  proposition  that  throughout  social  science 
we  have  permitted  the  descriptive  and  analytic 
phases  of  critical  method  to  become  ritualistic  in 
their  force  to  such  an  extent  that  they  seriously 
prejudice  the  right  of  the  evaluative  and  the  con- 
structive phases  of  scienceT] 

In  all  departments  of  knowledge,  and  specifi- 
cally in  those  reaches  of  knowledge  with  which 
we  are  now  dealing,  men  assume  that  their  odors 
are  those  of  superior  sanctity  when  they  declare, 
''You  have  no  business  to  have  opinions  about 
facts;  all  you  have  a  right  to  is  the  facts  them- 
selves, and  there  an  end  of  it !" 

If  we  had  time  to  amuse  ourselves  at  the  ex- 
pense of  this  pomposity,  it  would  be  easy  to  show 
that  it  is  thoroughly  "Pickwickian." 

Of  course  everybody  with  the  rudiments  of 
psychology  knows  that  evaluation  has  its  part  in 
the  earliest  processes  of  attention,  and  is  neces- 
sarily concerned  in  more  and  more  complex 
forms  in  the  successive  stages  of  knowledge. 
The  very  judgment  which  expresses  itself  in  the 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  217 

form  of  a  prohibition  of  evaluation  is  itself  an 
evaluation ! 

To  introduce  the  real  problem  in  this  connec- 
tion, then,  I  again  resort  to  paradox,  viz..  We  may 
never  put  our  valuations  into  the  facts,  and  zve 
must  always  put  our  valuations  into  the  facts. 

Now  hov^  near  can  we  get  to  the  truth  that 
is  pointed  at  from  opposite  directions  by  this 
contradiction  ? 

I  had  intended  to  analyze  the  two  sides  of  this 
formal  antithesis  in  detail.  So  much  needs  to 
be  said  about  the  substantial  matter,  however, 
that  I  have  time  merely  to  indicate  the  result  at 
which  analysis  would  arrive,  namely :  Our  evalu- 
ations are  always  pertinent  to  the  extent  of  their 
justification  and  use  as  hypotheses  for  explaining 
and  applying  the  facts.  Our  evaluations  are 
impertinent  to  the  extent  in  which  they  embarrass 
criticism  of  the  facts  and  of  their  functional  rela- 
tions. 

I  shall  not  return  to  this  abstract  statement  in 
the  rest  of  the  lecture,  but  I  shall  try  to  bring 
out  some  of  its  practical  consequences. 

To  begin  with,  I  would  call  attention  to  cer- 
tain educative  values  in  study  of  human  experi- 
ence earlier  than  that  of  living  men.  I  am  not 
saying  that  these  are  the  only  values.  No 
opinions   which  may  be  held   by  others   about 


2l8       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

additional  uses  of  such  study  are  either  accepted 
or  rejected  by  implication  in  what  I  am  now 
saying. 

If  we  had  the  training  of  all  the  future  legis- 
lators, administrators,  judges,  and  leaders  of 
public  opinion  in  our  country  completely  under 
our  control,  we  should  all  want  them  to  study  the 
past  of  the  human  race  to  some  extent.  Some  of 
us  would  want  to  prescribe  more  of  such  study, 
some  less.  We  should  state  our  reasons  for  such 
study  somewhat  differently,  but  each  of  us  would 
have  one  or  more  reasons  that  in  our  minds 
would  be  sufficient. 

The  main  reason  which  I  would  urge  for  such 
study,  from  the  side  of  the  human  process  in 
general,  not  from  the  standpoint  of  the  individual, 
would  be  closely  connected  with  my  idea  of  the 
functional  relation  between  the  evaluative  and 
the  constructive  phases  of  knowledge  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  two  phases  already  discussed  on 
the  other.  It  would  be  connected  also  with  the 
idea  which  I  outlined  in  the  seventh  lecture,  of 
the  analysis  of  process  as  contrasted  with  the 
tracing  of  chronological  sequence.  It  would 
differ  rather  sharply  with  the  common  concep- 
tion of  the  sort  of  knowledge  to  be  derived  from 
history.  In  a  word,  I  should  rely  upon  academic 
study  of  the  past  less  to  yield  inductions  of  the 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  219 

common  qualities  of  similar  occurrences^  past  and 
present,  or  of  the  causal  relations  between  histori- 
cal events;  I  should  expect  it  more  to  develop  an 
eye  for  all  the  different  kinds  of  factors  involved 
in  contempo7'ary  social  processes,  and  a  keen 
sense  of  proportion  to  gauge  the  ratio  of  influence 
between  the  factors. 

For  instance,  it  would  seem  to  me  very  paltry, 
even  if  it  were  possible,  to  learn  all  the  facts  and 
even  to  analyze  and  proportionally  estimate  the 
different  sorts  of  influences  that  led  to  the  facts 
which  come  to  our  minds  with  the  mention  of 
Brutus  and  Charlotte  Corday  and  J.  Wilkes 
Booth  and  the  rest  of  their  series.  We  may  as- 
sume for  certain  purposes  that  we  have  all  the 
facts  and  that  we  have  accounted  for  all  the 
facts  that  preceded  one  or  many  of  these  trage- 
dies. When  we  attempt  to  put  these  facts  and 
our  analysis  of  them  into  one  of  the  conventional 
specimens  of  historical  generalization,  the  irrele- 
vance of  the  induction  for  all  purposes  of  pre- 
cision is  so  obvious  that  the  skepticism  not  only 
of  trained  historians  but  of  intelligent  laymen  is 
unavoidable.  When  we  say,  Such  and  such 
conditions  produce  political  assassination,  we 
utter  a  generality  not  much  more  dependable  than 
the  generality  that  going  to  bed  precedes  the 
majority  of  deaths. 


220      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

Presupposing  the  descriptive  and  analytical 
phases  of  our  knowledge  process,  however,  and 
putting  the  emphasis  now  on  the  evaluative  phase 
in  one  of  the  cases  referred  to,  such  questions  as 
these  arise:  The  valuations  or  purposes  of  the 
society  concerned  being  taken  for  granted,  and 
the  facts  about  the  given  situation  being  ade- 
quately described,  how  many  kinds  of  action 
might  have  been  useful  in  that  situation  toward 
accomplishing  the  purposes?  Suppose  we  have 
some  means  of  knowing  that  the  valuations 
actually  held  by  the  society  in  question  were 
mistaken,  that  they  tended  toward  the  marring 
rather  than  the  making  of  the  society;  what  alter- 
natives were  within  reach  of  the  society  for  modi- 
fying the  valuations?  In  either  case,  was  this 
particular  recourse  of  political  assassination  the 
most  promising  means  in  sight?  What  means 
would  have  been  a  better  investment  for  the 
society  ? 

I  express  no  opinion  about  the  grade  of  social 
education  which  would  be  represented  by  apply- 
ing the  mind  to  such  questions,  nor  about  the 
proportion  of  such  exercise  which  would  be  ad- 
visable in  the  course  of  education  for  social 
leadership.  I  simply  say  that  a  certain  amount 
of  this  sort  of  inquiry  would  be  profitable  for 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  221 

everyone  who  is  to  bear  the  part  of  an  educated 
man  in  helping  to  solve  problems  of  real  life. 

But  the  attempt  to  answer  one  of  these  ques- 
tions is  an  attempt  to  arrive  at  an  evaluation  of 
the  particular  act  under  review.  Notice  I  have 
asked  no  questions  about  the  motives  of  the  actor, 
about  the  merit  or  demerit  of  his  act  as  a  question 
of  his  individual  virtue,  about  the  praise  or  blame 
that  should  be  meted  out  to  him,  about  his  respon- 
sibility or  his  irresponsibility  for  what  he  did. 
There  is  a  scientific  priggishness  which  is  alto- 
gether too  fussy  about  barring  even  these  ques- 
tions. As  hypothetical  problems,  assuming  a 
formulation  of  the  surrounding  circumstances, 
they  have  a  certain  pedagogical  use,  in  the  same 
way  to  be  sure  that  profitable  hypothetical  prob- 
lems in  the  theory  of  morals  are  presented  by 
Hamlet,  or  Lear's  daughters,  or  Othello. 

But  I  am  not  talking  about  this  second  type 
of  question.  I  am  making  use  of  the  fact  that 
we  treat  passages  of  experience  like  those  taken 
for  illustration  in  a  purely  arbitrary  way,  if  we 
are  content  to  deal  with  them  merely  as  effects. 
In  these  effects  the  causes  which  produced  them 
continue  their  work.  These  remoter  causes  take 
these  effects  into  partnership  as  cumulative  or 
varying  causes.  Thus  reinforced  the  antecedent 
causes  enter  anew  into  competition  with  the  other 


222       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

causes  that  are  working  for  results  in  the  same 
society.  Now  I  am  urging  that  it  is  profitable, 
as  a  part  of  our  apprenticeship  in  knowledge,  to 
practice  evaluating  the  forces  which  were  avail- 
able at  different  stages  of  experience,  which  men 
might  have  controlled  in  different  ways,  which 
might  have  been  turned  into  causes  of  different 
effects.  We  thus  have  a  means  of  learning  how 
to  foresee  various  possible  effects,  and  to  form 
valuations  accordingly  of  alternative  means  be- 
tween which  there  is  room  for  choice. 

In  other  words,  there  are  two  opposite  ways 
of  looking  at  past  occurrences.  The  first  way  is 
to  stand  in  front  of  them  so  to  speak,  to  see  them 
coming  toward  us,  to  make  out  the  different 
forces  that  are  impelling  them,  the  share  of  each 
force  in  the  impulsion,  and  to  regard  the  occur- 
rences as  so  many  resultants  of  all  this  previous 
interaction.  That  is  well  as  far  as  it  goes,  but 
it  is  attention  to  only  one  aspect  of  the  occur- 
rences. 

The  other  way  is  to  put  ourselves  around  be- 
hind an  experience  as  it  were,  to  look  forward 
along  the  line  of  its  action  as  a  cause,  and  not 
only  that,  but  to  take  account  of  the  inhibited 
causes  which  might  have  been  released  for  action 
instead  of  the  one  really  employed,  and  to  form 
valuations  of  the  relative  utility  of  the  means 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  223 

really  chosen  and  those  set  aside — the  actual  pur- 
poses of  the  society  concerned  being  taken  as  the 
criterion. 

I  repeat  that  I  am  speaking  of  the  academic 
values  of  these  two  attitudes  of  mind.  The  refer- 
ence is  for  the  sake  of  illustrating  what  I  mean 
by  the  evaluative  phase  of  science  in  distinction 
from  the  other  phases.  I  say  it  would  be  wasteful 
pedagogy  to  confine  our  views  of  occurrences  to 
their  relations  as  effects,  and  not  to  employ  our 
minds  also  upon  estimates  of  the  comparative 
value  of  those  occurrences,  and  others  which 
were  possible  alternatives,  considered  as  means 
for  promoting  the  contemporary  purposes  of  the 
given  society. 

The  illustration  might  perhaps  be  more  vivid 
if  stated  in  terms  of  a  different  sort  of  occurrence. 
Suppose  the  experience  in  hand  is  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  the  Ordinance  of  Secession, 
or  the  Reconstruction  Acts.  In  either  case  it  is 
impossible  for  us  to  end  our  scientific  treatment 
with  the  aspects  of  the  process  discussed  in  the 
last  two  lectures.  No  passage  in  human  experi- 
ence is  a  closed  incident.  Every  last  act  in  the 
human  drama  is  a  curtain  raiser  for  another  first 
act.  Suppose  we  have  exhausted  description  and 
interpretation  of  either  of  these  American  experi- 
ences up  to  its   realization  as  an  effect.     The 


224       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

human  process  does  not  stop  at  such  flag-stations 
of  our  minds.  Science  would  deserve  all  the 
contempt  which  the  least  appreciative  rule-of- 
thumb  man  aims  at  it,  if  science  limited  itself  to 
the  role  of  a  dissector  of  dead  deeds  or  a  necrolo- 
gist of  dead  men.  Science  is  at  last  a  part  of 
the  dynamic  and  directorate  of  events.  As  ap- 
prenticeship for  the  sort  of  science  which  com- 
pletes itself  in  action,  academic  dealing  with  past 
human  experiences  would  be  pitifully  ineffective 
if  it  stopped  with  consideration  of  men's  acts  as 
past  and  done.  Even  academically  we  may  place 
ourselves  in  the  position  of  the  actors.  We  may 
look  forward  from  their  standpoint  into  their 
problems.  We  may  take  account  of  their  re- 
sources. We  may  balance  their  appraisals  of 
probabilities.  We  may  agree  or  disagree  with 
them  in  their  evaluations  of  possible  alternatives. 
This  latter  procedure,  I  say,  is  a  profitable  ele- 
ment in  educational  experience. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  I  have  used  the  long  illus- 
tration simply  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  out 
the  difference  between  the  descriptive  and  the 
analytical  or  explanatory  phases  of  science  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  evaluative  phase  on  the  other. 
I  have  not  raised  the  question  of  the  amount  of 
this  evaluative  procedure  actually  needed  in  our 
academic  program.    I  have  not  intended  to  imply 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  225 

that  there  is  agreement  either  within  or  without 
academic  circles  about  the  pedagogical  utility  of 
this  evaluative  process  when  performed  upon  past 
situations.  However  the  case  may  stand  in  these 
respects,  my  central  interest  at  this  -point  is  in 
bringing  into  view  the  distinctive  traits  of  that 
aspect  of  science  to  which  this  lecture  is  devoted. 

Dropping  the  illustration  altogether  then,  so 
far  as  it  may  seem  to  imply  a  return  to  pedagogi- 
cal considerations  instead  of  continuing  atten- 
tion to  research,  I  would  resume  direct  discussion 
first  by  stating  as  clearly  as  I  can  what  I  mean  by 
"the  evaluating  phase  of  science"  at  this  point. 

/  mean  the  work  of  arriving  at  the  completest  ■ 
objective  estimate  possible  of  the  qualitative  and  » 
quantitative    effects    which    possible    alternative  • 
combinations  of  the  forces  to  be  controlled  in  a 
given  situation  zvould  have  upon  the  whole  human; 
process. 

In  other  words,  it  is  the  supremest  effort  of 
which  co-operative  science  is  capable  to  make 
ascertained  knowledge  of  cause  and  effect  in 
human  relations,  rather  than  individual  or  par- 
tisan preferences  about  human  relations,  the 
standard  of  value  by  which  to  arrive  at  decisions 
of  what  ought  to  be  in  human  programs.  As  I 
shall  remark  later,  the  use  of  such  a  criterion 
necessarily    depends    always    upon    provisional 


226       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

evaluations  of  this  as  preferable  to  that  through- 
out the  whole  range  of  supposable  effects  of 
alternative  programs. 

In  the  second  place  I  must  call  attention  to  the 
:  fact  that  when  this  evaluative  phase  of  science  is 
foremost,  whatever  its  subject-matter  and  what- 
\  ever  its  importance,  its  time-consciousness  is  set 
\  with  reference  to  the  present  and  the  future  in- 
i  stead  of  the  past. 

4        I  presume  it  would  be  possible  to  make  an 
argument  to  the  effect  that  no  study  of  the  past 
could  do  anything  whatever  toward  qualifying 
anybody  to  evaluate  forces  to  be  controlled  at 
^present.     It  is  conceivable  that  some  men  might 
:  go  to  the  extreme  of  believing  that  the  daily 
business  of  life,  the  school  of  actual  experiment 
with  affairs,  is  the  only  educator  that  can  make 
anyone  in  any  degree  competent  to  pass  on  the 
value  of  courses  of  action  open,  or  which  men 
,  might  be  induced  to  open,  at  this  moment.    Patu- 
lous as  l^hat  idea  seems  to  me  to  be,  I  will  not 
contend  against  it.     Let  anyone   assume   if  he 
will  that  all  study  of  the  past  goes  for  nothing  in 
equipping  men  to  deal  with  problems  of  the  day. 
The   fact  remains   that  when  the  world  wakes 
up  to  each  day's  work,  and  in  each  minute  of 
•  its  working  hours,  real  life  is  a  constant  evalua- 
■  tion  of  physical  and  human  forces.     Every  man 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  227 

who  is  dealing  with  reality  is  incessantly  obliged, 
whether  he  will  or  no,  to  assume  estimates  of 
the  relative  values  of  different  possible  means 
with  reference  to  the  ends  which  he  has  in 
view.  In  so  far  then  as  there  can  be  any 
science  at  all  of  human  life  considered  as  an 
enterprise,  not  as  a  reminiscence,  this  evaluative 
aspect  of  the  science  is  central. 

In  their  aims,  as  formulated  usually  by  their 
respective  exponents,  political  science,  political 
economy,  and  sociology  are  evaluative  procedures 
of  so  many  distinct  kinds.  Their  outlook  is  pro- 
spective rather  than  retrospective.  Each  attempts 
,to  find  out  how  to  bring  something  to  pass.  In 
general,  political  science  tries  to  find  out  the  best 
methods  of  legal  control;  political  economy,  the 
best  means  of  assuring  material  prosperity;  soci- 
ology, the  best  means  of  promoting  the  develop- 
ment of  human  personality. 

In  my  judgment  the  institute  of  social  sci- 
ence spoken  of  in  earlier  lectures  would  have 
little  use  for  those  academic  categories  after  it 
had  settled  down  to  serious  work;  but  I  may 
take  these  familiar  names  for  granted  a  moment 
for  purposes  of  illustration.  I  am  not  about  to 
say  anything  that  is  debatable.  I  need  merely 
to  emphasize  something  about  which  there  is  no 
controversy.     It  is  so  obvious  that  it  is  seldom 


228       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

thought  worthy  of  attention,  namely:  From 
MachiavelH  to  Mr.  Bryce  the  poHtical  scientists 
propose  some  variation  of  the  one  question,  "How 
may  government  most  successfully  govern?"  In 
proposing  this  question  the  political  scientists  evi- 
dently assume  successful  political  control  as  an 
end,  and  their  whole  effort  thereupon  becomes  a 
process  of  seeking  and  evaluating  possible  means 
to  that  end.  The  process  rejects  many  conceiv- 
able means  as  less  available  for  various  reasons, 
and  approves  certain  schemes  of  means  as  more 
likely  to  promote  the  end. 

The  political  economists  do  a  parallel  thing 
with  their  proposed  end  wealth,  and  the  means 
by  which  it  may  be  gained;  and  the  sociologists 
another  parallel  thing  with  their  proposed  end 
human  values,  and  the  best  means  of  achieving 
them. 

But  is  scientific  evaluation  complete  on  this 
level  ? 

Are  all  [its]  conquests,  glories,  triumphs,  spoils, 
Shrunk  to  this  little  measure? 

Is  it  one  and  the  same  thing  whether  the  sort 
of  government  which  MachiavelH  had  in  mind 
achieves  its  ends,  or  the  kind  of  government  pro- 
posed by  Mr.  Bryce  ?  Is  the  getting  of  predatory 
wealth  as  high  in  the  scale  of  ends  as  the  get- 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  229 

ting  of  social  wealth?  Does  it  make  any  differ- 
ence whether  the  ''human  values"  which  we 
propose  as  our  ends  are  the  values  of  the  mar- 
ket, or  of  the  jockey  club,  or  of  the  officers'  mess, 
or  of  the  academy,  or  of  the  cloister,  or  of 
neither?  In  other  words,  beyond  evaluation 
with  reference  to  the  ends  proposed  by  our  polit-|' 
ical  science,  our  economics,  our  sociology,  isN 
there  such  a  thing  as  evaluating  political  science^ 
economics,  sociology  themselves?  May  science,^ 
or  rather  must  science  control  their  determina- 
tion of  ends?  Must  science  ask  for  the  sanction 
of  those  ends  ?  Must  science  examine  their  pass- 
ports? Must  science  call  for  the  authority  by 
which  they  rank  as  ends? 

So  long  as  we  beg  the  whole  question  by 
assuming  the  finality  and  inviolability  of  those 
abstract  constructions,  "political  science,"  "eco- 
nomics," "sociology,"  our  so-called  social  sciences 
will  run  into  so  many  blind  alleys.  The  saving 
clause  in  the  situation  is  that  the  walls  of  these 
pockets  are  slightly  porous. 

The  moment  we  propose  a  vital  question,  with 
the  purpose  of  turning  upon  it  all  the  knowledge 
processes  we  control,  the  unreality  of  these  seg- 
regated "sciences"  is  evident. 

For  instance,  suppose  we  face  the  problem: 
Is  the  increase  of  capitalised  wealth  or  the  in- 


i/ 


230       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

crease  of  per  capita  consumption  more  to  he 
desired  in  the  United  States  today? 

Or  suppose  we  approach  the  same  problem 
from  this  angle:  Shoidd  a  tendency  toward  cen- 
tralization of  the  control  of  capital  or  toward 
decentralization  he  encouraged  in  the  United 
States  today? 

Abstract  as  the  problem  appears  in  this  ques- 
tion it  is  not  an  academic  problem.  It  is  the 
very  sort  of  real  problem  before  which  our  raw 
academic  sciences  either  resort  to  debating-so- 
ciety generalities,  or  they  balk  and  shy  into  easier 
paths  and  thus  confess  judgment  of  incapacity. 
Yet  fires  are  smoldering  at  Bethlehem,  at  Pitts- 
burgh, at  Chicago,  which  at  any  moment  may 
kindle  these  very  problems  into  a  national  con- 
flagration. 

Suppose  our  institute  of  social  science  re- 
solved to  struggle  with  the  problem.  It  would 
necessarily  first  reckon  with  the  preparatory 
stages  of  the  scientific  process  discussed  in  the  last 
two  lectures.  It  would  be  obliged  to  make  out  a 
provisional  conspectus  of  the  people  of  the  United 
States  in  their  present  situation  thought  of  as 
!  a  complex  of  achieved  values  combined  in  a 
momentary  status.  I  have  proposed  a  scheme  for 
such  an  exhibit  in  the  fiftieth  chapter  of  General 
Sociology.     The  proposal  is  crude  enough  in  all 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  231 

conscience,  and  I  would  be  the  first  to  welcome 
a  better  one;  but  nobody  to  my  knowledge  has 
submitted  a  substitute  in  competition. 

The  institute  would  be  obliged,  in  the  second 
place,  to  make  out  a  qualitative  and  a  quanti- 
tative analysis  of  the  valuations  at  present  held 
by  the  people  of  the  United  States,  and  to  trace 
the  isothermal  lines  of  their  distribution. 

Assuming  that  some  fairly  reliable  prelimi- 
nary survey  of  these  contents  of  our  present  life 
had  been  made,  a  starting-point  for  this  particu- 
lar phase  of  the  task  of  national  self-knowledge 
would  have  to  be  determined. 

The  alternative  phrasings  of  the  one  prob- \ 
lem  having  been  reconsidered,  the  question  would  ( 
at  once  present  itself,  ''desired"  by  whom?  or  J 
"encouraged"  by  whom? 

Here  our  institute  would  be  face  to  face 
with  a  concrete  particular  under  the  universal 
problem  of  evaluation.  The  generalized  ques-  ^ 
tion  is :  What  is  the  ultimate  criterion  of  human  f  ^• 
valuation f  Some  subspecies  of  this  question  is 
involved  at  every  point  in  the  scale  of  human 
relations,  from  the  upper  level  of  epistemology 
and  general  ethics  down  to  the  plane  of  indi- 
vidual choices  in  the  daily  routine. 

Our  institute  could  perform  no  more  timely 
service  than   the   work  waiting  to  be   done  at 


232       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

this  point.  There  is  more  available  insight  into 
the  criteria  of  moral  valuation  than  there  was 
v^hen  Kant  wrote;  more  than  when  Jeremy 
Bentham  wrote;  more  than  when  John  Stuart 
Mill  and  Herbert  Spencer  wrote.  That  insight 
has  not  yet  been  focalized,  however,  in  a  way 
which  appeals  to  many  men  as  more  demon- 
strative than  moral  perceptions  of  a  generation 
ago.  To  express  the  situation  in  a  different 
figure,  there  is  material  in  solution  in  the  think- 
ing of  all  social  scientists  today  sufficient  to  form 
the  nucleus  of  a  moral  philosophy  quite  as  dis- 
tinct and  a  thousand  times  more  capacious  than 
any  of  the  great  historical  schools  of  morals. 
This  material  has  not  been  precipitated  in  a 
form  that  arrests  concerted  attention. 

Nothing  could  as  surely  promote  the  formu- 
lation of  the  knowledge  at  our  command  in  a 
way  which  would  win  the  widest  assent,  as  co- 
operation of  the  different  types  of  men  that  our 
institute  would  contain.  Each  would  call  for  his 
own  sort  of  expansion  of  the  multiple  standard 
of  value  which  today's  insight  tends  to  construct ; 
and  the  concurrent  appeal  to  a  composite  standard 
would  crystallize  judgments  which  are  now  fluid 
about  the  criteria  of  social  values  which  must 
be  accepted  as  the  best  at  human  command. 

Every  historical  attempt  to  answer  the  ques- 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  233 

tion:     "By  what  standard  should  we  measure,' 
desirabihties  ?"    has    sooner   or   later   made   the\ 
mistake  of  setting  up  a  criterion  which  was  in  ) 
effect  a  limitation  rather  than  a  test.    The  hedon-  / 
ist's  "pleasure";  the  perfectionist's  "virtue";  the! 
utilitarian's    "happiness,"   each   in   its   way   met 
this  fate.     Functioning  at  first  as  a  guide  toward 
moral  valuation,   each  ended    by    blocking    the 
way  toward  thoroughly  vital  judgments  of  moral 
values.     Our  minds  play  tricks  upon*  themselves 
with  every  verbal  symbol  of  finality  which  they 
employ  as  a  measure  of  conduct.     Whenever  we 
strain  after  a  supreme  verbal  expression  of  the 
criterion  of  human  actions  it  always  turns  out 
that  we  have  merely  delivered  ourselves  over  to 
another  device  for  setting  bounds  to  our  appre- 
hension of  moral  values.     Whether  we  express 
our    uttermost    imaginings    of    desirability    in 
some     variation    of    the     religious     conception 
"accomplishment  of  the  divine  purpose,"  or  in 
some  variation  of  the  philosophical  conception 
summuni  homim,  the  content  which  we  associate 
with  the  phrase  is  always  somebody's  assemblage 
and  construction  of  particular  valuations.     Our 
phrases  for  criteria  of  moral  valuations  always, 
amount  therefore  in  application  to  requisitions 
that  conduct  to  be  approved  must  conform  to  a 
predetermined  structural  scheme,  just  as  a  block 


234       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

of  Stone  is  building  material  or  waste  according 
as  the  shape  and  size  in  which  it  has  been  hewn 
fit  it  or  not  for  a  designated  spot  shown  in  the 
architect's  specifications. 

The  innumerable  experiences  of  this  result 
furnish  a  certain  backing  to  the  men  who  flout 
every  effort  to  simplify  and  standardize  moral 
valuations.  These  resistances  come  from  all 
quarters  of  the  compass.  They  represent  on  the 
one  hand  radically  unsocial  tendencies.  The 
interest  of  men  thus  actuated  is  of  course  in 
impeaching  all  moral  standards  except  that  one 
:  which  leaves  them  free  to  pursue  their  own 
j  individualistic  programs.  On  the  other  hand, 
^  these  resistances  come  from  men  who  have  not 
yet  fully  learned  the  lesson  of  the  failure  of  all 
categorical  systems  of  morals.  These  men  do 
not  intentionally  oppose  the  installation  of  a 
more  effective  moral  criterion.  They  earnestly 
long  for  it ;  but  in  spite  of  the  lessons  of  the 
past  they  persist  in  demanding  another  fore- 
doomed "final"  criterion  or  nothing.  If  we  can- 
not propose  a  standard  of  conduct  which  is 
verbally  impregnable,  these  men  are  unable  to  see 
that  a  less  absolute  criterion  is  worth  anything 
at  all.  Yet  the  test  proposed  may  be  mentally 
and    morally    so   stimulating    and    enlightening 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  235 

that  its  dynamic  force  far  more  than  compen- 
sates for  its  logical  fallibility. 

An  absolute  standard  of  anything,  for  limited 
minds,  is  a  chimera.  Since  Sir  William  Hamil- 
ton we  have  no  excuse  for  dubiousness  about 
the  conclusion  that  finite  beings  can  never  be 
manipulators  of  "the  absolute"  except  in  their 
hallucinations.  Standards  of  human  conduct 
which  would  correspond  with  the  nebulous 
patterns  inviting  our  imaginations  when  we 
demand  infallible  categories  of  moral  judgment 
would  be  monuments  marking  termini.  Men 
have  no  business  with  termini.  We  are  in  the 
midst  of  a  career  whose  orbit,  so  far  as  we  know, 
is  parabolic.  Our  task  is  to  determine  the  path- 
of  our  orbit  as  far  ahead  as  we  can  calculate  it,  \ 
not  to  plot  moral  topography  at  infinity. 

I  have  deliberately  made  this  excursus  into 
ranges  of  philosophy  far  outside  of  social  sci- 
ence. I  have  done  it  for  a  specific  and  practical 
reason.  At  the  risk  of  writing  myself  down 
as  "easy"  I  will  assume  that  no  one  who  has 
given  serious  thought  to  social  science  is  in  the 
former  class  of  objectors  to  the  systematizing 
of  moral  evaluation.  On  the  other  hand,  during 
twenty-nine  years  of  teaching  college  seniors  and 
graduates  I  have  never  been  entirely  out  of  touch 
with  one  or  more  students,  not  to  mention  many 


236       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

,  older  men,  who  represented  the  second  type  of 
'reaction.  They  were  halted  in  the  ethical  phases 
of  their  sociological  thinking  because  no  infal- 
\  lible  criterion  of  social  action  could  be  proposed. 
I  have  gone  out  of  my  way  to  recognize  this 
difficulty.  I  do  not  want  anyone  to  think  I  am 
unaware  of  the  implications  and  the  responsibili- 
ties involved  in  attempting  to  evaluate  human  con- 
duct. On  the  other  hand,  I  want  it  to  be  known 
that  for  the  last  twenty  years  I  have  been  balan- 
cing what  I  am  about  to  say  against  the  weightiest 
arguments  I  could  find  in  the  literature  of  cate- 
gorical moral  philosophy.  I  may  be  wrong,  but 
if  there  is  anything  in  other  types  of  ethical 
theory  to  convict  me  of  error  I  have  failed  to 
find  it  after  years  of  search;  and  the  more  I  have 
hunted  after  such  correction  the  less  persuasive 
all  the  dialectic  and  speculative  arguments  have 
appeared. 

Let  us  return  then  to  our  sample  question 
with  its  two  profiles,  namely : 

First,  Is  increase  of  capitalized  wealth  or  of 
per  capita  consumption  more  to  he  desired  in  the 
United  States  today?  Second,  Should  a  tendency 
toward  centralization  of  the  control  of  capital 
or  toward  decentralization  he  encouraged  in  the 
United  States  today? 

I  will  squarely  face  the  matter-of-fact  ques- 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  237 

tion  which,  if  pressed  to  its  last  impHcations, 
punctures  all  the  categorical  criteria  that  philoso- 
phy has  ever  proposed;  namely,  "desired"  by 
whom?  "encouraged"  by  whom?  Without  a 
blush  I  return  the  shamelessly  homespun  answer, 
Desired  and  encouraged  by  the  consensus  of  our  \  ^ 
institute  of  social  science! 

Could  anything  be  more  banal!  Could  any- 
thing more  ignorantly  trifle  with  the  final  prob- 
lem of  moral  philosophy!  Could  there  be  a 
weaker  attempt  to  cover  failure  by  impudence ! 

In  full  posssession  of  my  senses  I  have  invited 
this  retort,  and  I  am  prepared  to  stand  or  fall 
by  my  answer.  What  I  mean  is  this :  The  whole 
series  of  proposed  philosophical  "ultimates" 
of  moral  judgment — "happiness,"  "perfection,"' 
"rectitude,"  "the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest 
number,"  and  their  variations — have  turned  out 
to  be  essentially  like  the  principal  schedules  in  anl 
American  tariff.  They  have  been  written  by' 
their  friends  for  the  benefit  of  their  friends. 
When  we  have  allowed  the  clergy  to  prescribe 
the  moral  code  for  the  laity,  we  have  had  a 
clerical  cast  of  life.  When  we  have  allowed 
rulers  to  prescribe  the  moral  code  for  subjects, 
we  have  had  a  rulers'  regime.  When  we  have 
allowed  masters  to  prescribe  the  moral  code  for 
w^orkmen,  we  have  had  a  masters'  society.     In 


238       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

the  same  way,  when  we  have  allowed  abstract 
philosophers  to  construe  ultimate  criteria  of 
moral  values,  those  criteria  have  contained  just 
the  degree  and  kind  of  wisdom  which  their  mak- 
ers could  put  into  them,  and  no  more.  They 
were  defective  with  the  defects  of  their  au- 
thors' knowledge,  and  vision,  and  judgment.  The 
moment  wider  knowledge,  larger  vision,  juster 
judgment  have  dictated  our  moral  valuations,  the 
categories  have  proved  to  possess  just  the  au- 
thority of  their  authors'  grasp  of  the  situation, 
no  more. 

In  other  words,  all  our  paraphernalia  of  pre- 
tentious philosophical  formulations  of  moral 
criteria  represent  simply  this  state  of  things: 
So  far  as  the  persons  who  made  or  who  hold 
the  respective  formulas  are  able  to  judge,  those 
formulas  stand  for  the  actual  scale  of  moral 
goods. 

That  is,  standards  of  human  action  are  always 
at  most  merely  digests  of  the  best  human  wisdom 
that  can  be  brought  into  judgment  upon  the 
action.  It  may  or  may  not  always  be  convenient 
to  adopt  single  words  or  phrases  in  recapitula- 
tion of  this  fact;  words  or  phrases  which  visual- 
ize or  epitomize  as  well  as  possible  the  criteria  or 
the  specific  judgments  which  follow  from  the  use 
of  the  criteria.     Whether  we  adopt  such  devices 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  239 

or  not,  the  truth  remains  that  the  devices  have 
no  more  and  no  less  vahdity  than  the  tenabiHty 
of  the  supposed  knowledge,  and  the  inferences 
from  the  knowledge  which  the  users  of  the  stand- 
ard compose  into  and  extract  from  their  re- 
spective formulas. 

What  I  said  then  amounts  to  this:     What 
always  has   been   in   fact  let  us   now   candidly 
declare,  viz..  The  last  available  measure  of  de-S 
sirability  in  human  affairs  is  the  best  wisdom  of  *| 
men  that  can  be  applied  in  judgment  of  the  \ 
affairs. 

To  reword  my  first  answer  a  little  more 
accurately:  In  so  far  as  an  approximation  to 
reliable  evaluation  of  conduct  may  be  looked  j 
for  at  all  from  academic  sources,  not  formulas 
of  individual  theorists,  or  of  types  of  theorists, 
but  decisions  rendered  by  such  a  composite 
council  as  zve  have  supposed,  would  be  the  most 
enlightened  appraisal  of  moral  values  that  science  \ 
can  reach.  • 

The  school  of  moral  philosophy  in  which 
Adam  Smith  was  both  pupil  and  teacher  referred 
moral  valuations  at  last  to  the  hypothetical  "dis- 
passionate observer."  We  have  gone  beyond 
this.  We  know  that  the  most  dispassionate  indi- 
vidual possible  would  still  be  at  best  only  a  par- 
tial observer.     We  want  to  widen  the  appeal  to 


240      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

a  council  of  dispassionate  observers.  But  our 
scientific  criteria  are  now  even  more  exacting 
than  that.  We  want  to  insure  not  merely  the 
checking  up  and  the  checking  off  of  one  observer's 
partialness  by  that  of  many  others,  but  we  want 
to  insure  as  far  as  possible  the  correction  of  the 
collective  partialness  of  all  the  observers  by 
loyal  deference  to  the  reality  observed. 

In  proposing  a  criterion  of  evaluation  which 
is  at  first  glance  wholly  incredible,  I  believe  I 
have  proposed  something  much  more  essentially 
scientific  than  any  criterion  in  a  form  convenient 
for  extraction   of  deductive   conclusions.     The^  .^ 
most  we  can  possibly  know  about  the  value  of  -U^"^ 
f  any  range  or  kind  or  case  of  human  conduct  is^^r^ 
•  the  most  that  can  be  concluded  about  it  by  con-   X^j 

sensus  of  men  measuring  the  conduct  from  alu^r 
,   of  its  discoverable  angles.     The  boast  of  science,  ^j^^ 
•    ever  since  there  has  been  a  pretense  of  science,   (^^ 
has  been  that  it  is  the  output  of  this  all-sided  jv^'j' 
endeavor.     It  has  been,  and  it  is,  to  the  limit  of 
our   partially   organized   methods    of   investiga- 
tion.    Social  science,  at  all  events,  has  not  yet 
used  to  the  full  the  evaluating  ability  which  is 
actually  available  for  passing  on  the  greater  or 
less  worth  of  accessible  means  for  the  present 
and  future  purposes  of  men. 

In  the  estimate  of  science,  not  of  special  inter- 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  241 

ests,  evaluation  of  means  for  immediate  ends 
must  always  be  credible  simply  in  the  degree  in 
which  the  minor  valuation  is  held  as  a  term  in  the 
scale  of  valuation  of  all  ends,  up  to  the  largest 
and  last  that  can  be  brought  into  human  view. 
This  valuation  can  never  be  essentially  a  matter 
of  definition  nor  of  category;  although  defini- 
tions and  categories  are  always  worth  what  they 
are  worth  as  tools  of  inquiry  and  of  control. 
The  definitions  and  the  categories,  however,  are 
merely  symbols  of  the  amount  and  kind  of  wis-\ 
dom  which  the  inquirers  can  bring  to  bear  upon  / 
the  particular  problem.  The  real  task  in  all( 
evaluation  is  an  appraisal  of  the  time,  place, 
degree,  and  manner  of  all  the  functionings  con- 
cerned in  the  situation. 

When  we  confront  a  real  question,  like  the 
sample  I  have  suggested,  the  problem  is  to  shape 
up  all  the  influences  which  one  program  exerts 
upon  all  the  present  interests  of  Americans,  and 
to  put  the  exhibit  into  comparison  with  an  exhibit 
of  all  the  influences  whic^  would  be  exerted  by 
a  possible  alternative  program.  Then  the  evalu- 
ative question  is,  Which  collection  and  tendency 
of  influences  are  more  desirable  for  present 
Americans? 

In  the  last  resort  definitions  do  not,  cannot, 
and  should  not  decide  such  questions,  even  for 


242       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

academic  science.  Such  answers  as  are  in  vogue 
at  all  are  such  approaches  to  consensus  among 
scientists  of  different  sorts  as  are  arrived  at  by 
our  present  long-distance  exchange  of  views  be- 
tween scientists.  In  the  interest  of  scientific 
honesty,  of  scientific  clearness,  of  scientific  serv- 
ice, let  us  frankly  conform  our  declarations  and 
our  practices  to  the  facts. 

It  is  not  as  though  we  were  novices  in  the 
world.     Experience  has  given  us  wide  expanses 
of  knowledge  of  the   difference  between  good 
and  evil  in  human  conditions  and  in  human  prac- 
tices.   We  have  no  need  to  disguise  in  sacramen- 
tal  phrase   the  literal   procedure  which   is   our 
wisest  course  toward  more  knowledge  and  richer 
experience. 
/        The  most  reliable  criterion  of  human  values 
\  which  science  can  propose  would  he  the  con- 
\sensus  of  councils  of  scientists  representing  the 
J  largest  possible  variety  of  human  interests,  and 
to-operating  to  reduce  their  special  judgments  to 
a  scale  which  would  render  their  due  to  each  of 
\the  interests  in  the  total  calculation. 

This  declaration  of  principles,  and  the  pro- 
gram which  it  implies,  would  not  be  the  abdica- 
tion of  science.  It  would  be  science  stripped  of 
cant.  It  would  be  science  with  its  eyes  open.  It 
would  be  science  with  its  decks  cleared  for  action ! 


THE  EVALUATING  PHASE  243 

From  this  outlook  there  is  nothing  Utopian 
whatsoever  in  anticipating  the  development  of 
institutes  of  social  science,  composed  not  alone 
of  academic  men,  by  any  means,  but  reinforced 
more  and  more  by  scientific  men  of  action  func- 
tioning as  councils  of  elder  statesmen,  and  focus- 
ing all  the  wisdom  within  human  reach  upon  the 
conduct  of  men's  affairs. 


LECTURE  IX 

THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  OF  SOCIAL 
SCIENCE 

Something  remains  to  be  said  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  last  lecture.  In  the  present  lecture 
so  much  must  be  said  about  the  relations  of  the 
evaluative  phase  of  science  to  the  constructive 
phase  that  it  is  necessary  to  have  an  understand- 
ing at  the  outset  about  the  meaning  of  our 
words. 

While  I  have  referred  to  the  evaluative  pro- 
cess in  a  more  general  sense,  I  mean  by  it  in  par- 
ticular the  process  by  which  students  of  social 
science  arrive  at  social  valuations. 
J       By  social  valuations  I  mean  judgments  of 
i  desirable  or  undesirable  social  conditions  or  social 
[procedures.     My  reservations  in  earlier  lectures 
entitle  me  to  restrict  my  use  of  these  terms  now 
to  the  relatively  developed  form  of  them  which 
plays  its  part    in    general    social    science.     The 
child  begins  to  evaluate  as  soon  as  it  begins  to 
pay  attention.     The  child  begins  to  have  valua- 
tions of  things  wanted  or  not  wanted — things 
hard,  that  hurt;  things  soft,  that  soothe;  things 
bright,  that  attract;  things  dull,  that  repel,  etc. 
Before  it  is  out  of  the  cradle  the  child  begins 
244 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  245 

to  have  other  kinds  of  valuations  for  ways  to 
get  the  wanted  things  and  to  avoid  the  not- 
wanted  things.  From  those  Hkes  and  disHkes 
which  are  more  reflex  than  rational  up  to  the 
most  complex  philosophical  judgments  there  are 
innumerable  gradations  of  valuations  within 
corresponding  diameters  of  interest.  I  am  con- 
fining myself  now  to  those  valuations  of  social 
desirability  or  undesirability  which  are  arrived 
at  by  the  most  credible  scientific  methods  that 
men  control. 

Still  further,  what  I  said  in  the  last  lecture! 
applied  more  strictly  to  valuations  of  social  ends, 
that  is  to  conditions  to  be  attained  or  avoided, 
than  to  valuations  of  social  means,  that  is  ways 
of  attaining  or  avoiding  the  respective  ends. 

Although  the  subject  of  the  present  lecture  is 
the  constructive  phase  of  social  science,  I  shall 
make   this   aspect   of   the   scientific  process  less 
prominent  than  further  reference  to  the  evalua- 
tive phase.     This  is  primarily  because  academic, 
people,  whether  they  will  or  no,  have  relatively'; 
much  more  opportunity  for  influence  upon  thei 
evaluative  than  upon  the  constructive  scientific  1 
processes — at  least  upon  the  final  stages  of  con-( 
struction. 

I  would  point  out  at  once  that  in  stages  of 
social  science  in  which  construction  is   at   the 


246       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

I  forefront  the  evaluative  process  falls  into  a  sec- 
I  ondary  role,  and  is  most  active  not  in  apprais- 
'  ing  ends  but  in  selecting  means  to  attain  the 
ends. 

It  would  require  a  treatise  to  show  how  this 
process  functions  in  different  combinations  at 
different  stages  of  generalization.  To  avoid 
confusion  as  far  as  possible  I  restrict  my  terms 
arbitrarily.  \For  the  present,  therefore,  I  mean 
here  and  no^  by  the  evaluating  phase  of  social 
science  that  part  of  it  in  which  we  arrive  at 
judgments  about  things  to  be  desired  or  avoided 
by  groups  or  types  of  people,  or  judgments  of 
means  for  attaining  or  avoiding  those  things. 
Those  judgments  themselves  I  call  valuationsTJ 

Let  me  illustrate :  The  judgments  now 
prevailing  in  England  that  it  is  good  for  English- 
men to  have  a  hereditary  upper  house,  an  estab- 
lished church,  ecclesiastical  control  of  primary 
education,  and  a  system  of  primogeniture;  or 
with  reference  to  American  conditions  the  judg- 
ments that  children  should  not  be  obliged  to  work 
for  pay  before  a  certain  age;  that  such  and  such 
sanitary  conditions  should  prevail  in  given  occu- 
pations; that  there  should  be  a  certain  minimum 
wage  for  labor;  that  a  certain  number  of  cubic 
feet  of  space  per  occupant  should  be  required 
in    city    dwellings;    that    there    should    be    cer- 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  247 

tain  uniform  marriage  and  divorce  laws  in  all 
the  states;  that  senators  should  be  chosen  by 
popular  vote;  that  women  should  be  admitted 
to  the  suffrage;  that  government  should  have  a 
larger  share  in  determining  the  rules  of  busi- 
ness, etc.  I  use  these  illustrations  with  no  impli- 
cation about  their  scientific  credentials,  and 
particularly  without  implying  any  opinion  of  my 
own  as  to  the  pros  and  cons  with  reference  to 
a  single  one  of  them.  Any  one  of  these  judg- 
ments, simply  as  such,  whether  it  is  valid  or 
invalid,  whether  it  is  held  by  many  or  by  few, 
is  a  specimen  of  what  I  mean  by  the  term 
valuation. 

I  repeat  that  I  do  not  assert  either  that  we 
have  or  that  we  have  not  scientific  conclusions 
in  either  of  these  premises.  The  subjects  are 
merely  taken  as  illustrations  of  conditions  upon 
which  scientific  conclusions  are  desirable.  So  far 
as  we  have  conclusions,  they  are  valuations  after 
their  kind,  as  I  now  use  the  term.  Moreover, 
assuming  for  the  sake  of  illustration  that  we  have 
such  conclusions,  whatever  their  import,  so  far  as 
one  of  those  conclusions  was  arrived  at  as  a 
result  of  conscious  effort  the  process  of  reach- 
ing that  judgment  is  what  I  mean  in  the  present 
connection  by  evaluation. 

I  hope  a  historical  case  will  help  to  bring  out 


248       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

the  things  that  I  want  most  to  emphasize  at  this 
point.  In  1 8 14  two  eminent  professors  of 
Roman  law  began  a  controversy  which  has  its 
echoes  still  among  legal  theorists  throughout  the 
world.  Thibaut  at  Heidelberg  uttered  an  appeal 
for  the  construction  of  a  national  code  for  all 
Germans.  If  we  apply  our  present  terms  in 
recalling  the  incident,  Thibaut  published  the 
valuation  that  a  national  code  would  be  a  good 
thing  for  all  Germans. 

It  is  true  that  there  is  an  element  of  con- 
struction in  all  evaluation.  As  there  can  be  no 
construction  except  with  the  leverage  of  valua- 
tion, the  man  who  does  the  work  of  evaluation 
must  also  be  credited  in  the  final  account  with 
some  share  in  construction.  German  historians 
today  would  doubtless  without  exception  agree 
in  this  sense  that  Thibaut  did  something  toward 
initiating  the  influences  which  at  last  formed 
the  imperial  German  code.  I  would  certainly 
not  dissent  from  this  judgment. 

So  far  as  immediate  and  visible  consequences 
were  concerned,  however,  Thibaut  simply  reit- 
erated his  valuation,  and  with  that  his  initiative 
shot  its  bolt. 

Another  and  still  more  eminent  man  had  a 
valuation  which  he  promptly  published  in  oppo- 
sition to  Thibaut.      Savigny  at  Berlin  did  not 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  249 

directly  deny  the  desirability  of  a  national  code 
for  Germans.  His  procedure  was  rather  an 
evaluation  of  the  means  available  for  producing 
such  a  code.  In  an  elaborate  argument,  which 
is  among  the  curiosities  of  social  science, 
Savigny  developed  the  proposition  that  Roman 
lawyers  at  a  certain  period  were  so  uniquely 
endowed  with  a  talent  for  jurisprudence  that 
their  work  was  not  only  a  model  for  all  time, 
but  because  of  the  inferior  endowment  of  later 
men  it  must  be  accepted  as  settling  rules  of  law 
for  all  time.  That  is,  Savigny's  valuation  of 
the  means  for  producing  a  German  code  was 
negative.  With  reference  to  popular  construc- 
tion of  the  sort  desired  by  Thibaut,  Savigny's 
valuation  was  in  effect  a  negative  valuation  of 
the  end  itself. 

Singularly  enough  neither  of  these  scholars 
appeared  to  realize  the  full  significance  of  the 
decisive  factor  in  the  situation.  Thibaut  may 
have  been  right  that  there  was  legal  talent 
enough  in  Germany  to  produce  a  national  code. 
Savigny  may  have  been  wrong  in  crediting 
Roman  lawyers  of  two  thousand  years  earlier 
with  a  monopoly  of  legal  genius.  They  were  both 
wrong  in  confining  the  question  so  narrowly  to 
those  considerations.  The  central  fact  was  that 
the  Germans  were  not  a  single  state.    They  were 


250       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

scores  of  states.  They  had  memories  and  theo- 
ries of  unity,  but  these  overhanging  shadows  of 
nationahty  were  in  many  ways  more  disturbing 
than  harmonizing.  The  grim  fact,  more  potent 
than  all  the  theories,  was  that  there  could  not  be 
one  code  until  there  was  one  people.  Before 
there  could  be  a  process  of  legal  creation  there 
must  have  been  a  process  of  social  creation.  A 
unified  Germany  was  the  necessary  precondition 
of  a  unified  code  for  Germany.  Both  these  schol- 
ars knew  this.  Both  referred  to  it.  Neither  of 
them,  however,  seemed  to  give  it  as  much  impor- 
tance in  his  reckoning  as  even  a  half -fledged 
historical  scholar  would  today  find  that  it  had  in 
reality,  if  he  inquired  into  the  facts  of  the  period. 

I  use  this  illustration  here  not  merely  to  bring 
out  the  contrast  between  evaluation  on  the  one 
hand  and  objective  social  construction  on  the 
other,  but  still  further  to  hint  at  the  usual  limita- 
tions of  academic  men  in  connection  with  these 
two  aspects  of  the  scientific  process.  Please 
observe  that  I  say  ''usual."  I  do  not  say  invari- 
able either  in  kind  or  degree.  I  shall  presently 
speak  more  in  detail  about  this  matter. 

So  far  as  the  actual  work  of  organizing  the 
social  labor  of  founding  a  national  German  code 
was  concerned,  Thibaut  reached  his  limit  in 
standing  for  the  valuation  that  such  a  code  was 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  251 

desirable.  With  all  his  services  for  historical 
jurisprudence  Savigny  functioned  in  this  connec- 
tion on  the  whole  as  an  arrester  of  construction. 
He  stood  for  his  negative  valuation  of  the  means 
available  for  the  production  of  such  a  code. 

Who  then  were  the  efficient  constructors  of 
the  imperial  German  code  now  in  force? 

Why,  in  a  word,  the  men  from  Bliicher  to 
Moltke  who  did  the  rough  soldier  work,  and  the 
other  men  summarized  by  the  symbolic  name 
of  Bismarck  who  did  the  rough  and  the  smooth 
work  of  diplomacy  and  statecraft,  and  the  mil- 
lions of  unheralded  men  in  all  the  industries  who 
produced  an  economic  unity  which  demanded 
political  unity.  Here  then  is  a  picture  from  life 
of  the  abstract  distinction :  Evaluation  in  social 
^science  is  a  process  of  arriving  at  judgments 
about  things  worth  doing  and  of  ways  of  doing 
them;  construction  is  a  process  of  applying 
human  forces  to  the  doing  of  the  things. 

I  do  not  mean  that  German  scholars  had  no 
more  part  in  the  process  which  reached  the  end 
of  an  epoch  at  Versailles  in  1871.  Isolating  this 
incident  of  an  early  academic  debate,  however, 
it  sharply  silhouettes  the  distinction  between 
evaluation  and  construction. 

For  further  purposes  of  illustration,  I  cite 
a  movement  directly  connected  with  the  event 


252       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

just  mentioned  and  with  the  situation  referred 
to  in  the  preceding  illustration. 

On  October  6,   1872,  a  conference  occurred 
at  Eisenach  which  marks  the  launching  of  the 
most  clearly  defined,  the  most  energetic,  and  the 
most   comprehensive    attempt    ever    successfully 
undertaken   by    academic   men    in   the    way   of 
social    construction.     It    was    the    first    formal 
session  of  the  Verein  fiir  SocialpqUtik.    The  gen- 
eral purpose  of  the  organization  was  described 
in  the  opening  address  as  follows : 
I         '.'First  of  all,  it  is  our  hope  by  co-operation  to 
<  find  a  basis  for  the  reform  of  our  social  condi- 
l  tions,  to  gain  general  acceptance  of  ideas  which 
\  have  long  been  held  here  and  there  but  which 
have    as    yet    not    become    decisive    in    public 
,  opinion" 

In  brief  the  primary  purpose  of  the  move- 
ment was  to  create  and  to  crystallize  public 
opinion  in  Germany  in  the  direction  of  certain 
fundamental  valuations  held  by  the  promoters. 
The  ultimate  purpose  was  to  make  this  public 
opinion  effective  in  molding  the  civic  and  eco- 
nomic policies  of  Germany. 

The  knowledge  of  the  men  best  acquainted 
with  this  movement  from  the  beginning  until 
now  would  probably  be  overtaxed  if  they  under- 
took  precisely   to   distribute   the    work   of   the 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  253 

organization    and    of    its    individual    members 
between  our  categories  "evaluation"  and  "con- 
struction."    I  shall  attempt  nothing  of  the  sort. 
I  shall  return  to  the  illustration  in  a  moment.    At 
present  I  refer  to  the  case  as  in  many  respects 
the  most  exemplary  constructive  enterprise  that 
has  ever  been  carried  on  by  scholars  in  the  social 
sciences.    This  is  my  particular  point :  Evaluation 
f  and  construction  were  combined  in  the  movement, 
\  but  the  emphasis — in  the  prospectus  and  in  the 
Subsequent    program — has    always    been    heavy 
jupon  the  primary  work  of  planting  valuations  in 
{ the  minds  of  Germans.     In  my  own  judgment 
general  experience  and  the  experience  of  these 
particular  men  confirm  the  wisdom  of  this  empha- 
sis, as  a  model  for  social  scientists  as  a  rule.     It 
certainly  did  not  turn  out  to  make  the  work  of 
these  men  abortive.    On  the  contrary,  it  would  be 
a  ludicrously  superficial  history  of  the  new  Ger- 
man empire  which  did  not  give  prominence  to 
the  work  of  the  Verein  fiir  Socialpolitik. 

Selecting  now  another  point  of  departure,  I 
will  use  a  series  of  detached  propositions  to  de-, 
fine  the  viewpoint  of  this  lecture:  \ 

1.  The  evaluative  phase  of  social  science  is; 
quite  distinct  in  kind  from  the  constructive  phase.,V 

2.  Some  sort  of  evaluation  precedes  construc-j 


2  54       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

jtion,  but  construction  does  not  necessarily  succeed 
/  evaluation. 

3.  The  investigator  and  the  teacher  as  such 
have  only  restricted  scope  for  changing  social 
evaluation  into  social  construction. 

4.  No  general  rules  can  define  the  duties  of 
academic  men  with  respect  to  the  constructive 
phase  of  their  own  science. 

5.  Although  social  science  is  abortive  unless 
social  evaluation  passes  into  corresponding  social 
action,  the  work  of  individuals  which  stops  in  one 
of  the  preparatory  phases  of  social  science  need 
not  be  abortive.  Division  of  labor  may  provide 
for  its  continuation  by  other  men. 

6.  No  infallible  means  are  know^n  for  trans- 
forming social  valuations  into  corresponding 
social  constructions. 

I  proceed  to  expand  these  propositions,  though 
not  in  detail  and  not  in  the  order  just  stated. 


If  the  college  students  among  whom  I  began 
twenty-nine  years  ago  to  practice  my  naivete  in 
history  and  economics  had  asked  me  whether  it 
was  the  vocation  of  professors  of  social  science 
to  reform  the  world,  I  should  without  compunc- 
tion have  answered,  Yes. 
!  My  present  estimate  of  the  service  to  be  ex- 
V     pected  of  academic  men  puts  it  no  lower  in  degree 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  255 

than  I  should  have  rated  it  then;  but  I  certainly 
classify  the  academic  function  now  as  chiefly  dif- 
fering in  kind  from  that  which  I  then  assumed 
as  a  matter  of  course. 

One  of  the  most  obvious  limitations  of  the 
academic  cast  of  mind  is  inability  to  distinguish 
between  the  evaluative  and  the  creative  phases  of 
conduct.  This  trait  registers  itself  in  the  com- 
placency with  which  the  academic  man  contem- 
plates his  valuations  of  social  forces,  as  though 
there  were  no  unbridged  chasms  between  these 
appraisals  and  application  of  them.  jThe  aca- 
demic man — and  I  am  willing  to  be  understood 
as  a  reluctant  witness  in  a  matter  of  personal 
experience — the_academk.  man  k  apt  to  draw  a 
sigh  of  righteous  relief,  as  of  one  who. has  fin- 
ished ^  the  XQurse^-andJkept  the  faith,  when^Jie 
thinks  that  he  has  Justified  the  conclusion,  for 
example,  that  an  inheritance  tax  is  right,  or  that 
the  social  evil  should  be. Jrealed_.itLJLhis__or  that 
w^y.  Among  the  consequences  of  this  fact  is  on 
the  one  hand  too.ready, assumption  by  academic 
men  ihajjconclusions  are  reliable  .which  have,  not 
satisfied  the_^t  of  experience ;  andjon  the  other 
hand  too  willing  aloofness  from  the  work  of 
cpJ'Tii)Jejbng„ihe__sci,^^^^  cycle  by_carrying  on 
knowing  and  evaluating  into  doing.  The  aca- 
demic man  is  prone  to  draw  arbitrary  lines  for 


256      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

ranking  purposes  between  theory  and  action. 
While  he  claims  tKat  so-called  practical  men  have 
too  little  regard  for  science,  it  is  quite  as  true 
that  the  academic  man  has  too  little  _regard  for 
^actice.  When  the  practical  man  meets  the  aca- 
demic man's  valuation,  I  will  not  say  with  his 
blunt,  "How  do  you  know  ?"  but  with  the  equally 
incredulous,  "What  of  it?"  "What  are  you 
going  to  do  with  it?"  or  "What  are  you  going 
to  do  about  it?"  the  academic  man  is  apt  to 
reply  by  his  attitude  if  not  in  so  many  words: 
"That  is  not  my  affair.  Here  is  a  truth  which 
concerns  you.  Take  it  or  leave  it.  My  duty 
is  done  and  my  conscience  is  clear. 3 

The  emphasis  of  the  present  lecture  is  on 
the  consideration  that  there  is  more  "science"  in 
the  practical  man's  questions,  "What  of  it?" 
"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  it?"  "What  are 
you  going  to  do  about  it?"  than  in  the  academic 
man's  often  implied  answer.  fThe  scientific  jgro- 
cess  is  not  completed  in  description,  explanation, 
and  eyaluation,.  If  there  were  no  other  reason, 
it  would  be  enough  that  we  have  no  right  _to 
regard  our  description,  explanation,  and  evalua- 
tion^as  themselves  complete  until  they  have  sus- 
tained the  Jest  of  experiment.  This  test  might 
disclose  flaws  at  innumerable  points  in  the  earlier 
partial  processes^7 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  257 

In  arguing  to  this  proposition  I  do  not  mean 
to  imply  that  scientific  men  are  bound  to  play 
a  larger  part  directly  in  practical  affairs,  ^y 
point  at  present  is  rather  that  practical.,  meu, 
whether  they  are  in  academic  positions  or  not, 
are  bound  to  ^lay  a  larger  part  in  science?) 

To  be  perfectly  clear  I  must  explain  myself 
a  little   further.     Whether  academic  men  may 
be  more  useful  than  they  have  been  in  activi- 
ties   beyond    their    proper  academic  scope  is  a 
question  which  I  do  not  raise  in  this  general 
form.     Some  individuals  may  be  and  properly. 
Some  individuals  may  not  be  and  quite  as  prop- 
erly. Academic  social  scientists  on  the  whole  may 
function  best,  in  some  times  and  places,  if  they 
combine  their  academic  duties  in  a  much  larger 
way  than  is  the  rule  at  present  with  their  teach- 
ing and  investigating  functions.     I  am  not  now^ 
dealing  with  that  problem.     I  bring  no  charge  \ 
therefore  against  academic  men  for  having  had  / 
no  more  to  do  with   "social   reform,"   as  that 
idea  is  generally  understood  in  the  modern  litera- 
ture of  "muckraking"  and  "uplift."     Indeed,  if  ( 
/ 1  were  to  make^^^^  Ameri- 

/  can  teachers  of  social  science,  it  would  be  against 
^    those  of  their  number  who  have  been  prema- 
turely eager  to  _jn£Luencfi_ .social  policies  rather 
than    too    indifferent.     Certain  men    have    been 


258       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

over-ambitious  to  apply  science  which  they  did 
not  have.  They  have  thus  discredited  science 
in  general.  Our  social  science  might  have  been 
farther  advanced  if  all  our  investigators  had  kept 
both  eyes  constantly  on  their  investigations,  if 
there  had  been  no  one  among  them  who  kept 
one  eye  always  and  both  eyes  sometimes  on  a 
public  more  interested  in  schemes  than  in  science. 
"^Those  are  most  worthy  of  admiration  among 
academic  men  who  have  the  patience  and  the 
courage  to  put  their  whole  strength  into  that 
for  which  they  are  chosen,  that  for  which  they 
are  presumably  best  fitted  and  best  equipped, 
namely,  the  purely  pedagogical  or  investigative 
phases  of  science.1 

I      (Jt  is  conceivable  that  our  world  might  be  a 
/better  world  than  it  is  if  philosophers,  men  of 
theory,  investigators  were  also  the  world's  ex- 
ecutive officersT)   Many  men   from  Plato  down 
have  been  of  that  opinion.     I  could  not  complain 
of  Providence  if  academic  men  on  the  average 
exhibited  more  genius  than  they  do  for  practi- 
cal affairs.     As  things  now  stand,  however,  it 
j  appeals  to  me  as  a  fortunate  dispensation  that 
there   are   people   more   efficient   than   academic 
men  on  the  average  in  bringing  things  to  pass. 
The  moral  which  I  would  draw  is  not  that  aca- 
demic men  should  neglect  any  work  in  which 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  259  1 

they  might  increase  their  usefulness  without*^  ^<>-  ^ 
restricting  their  primary  function,  but  that  they  k,  ^ 
should  regard  their  academic  work  as  presum-  /  p>v 
ably  their  main  business,  and  should  const- fyj-^, 
quently  in  most  cases  be  willing  to  fall  into  the  j  i 
rank  of  supporters  instead  of  aiming  to  be  lead-y 
ers  of  actual  execution.  t 

The  point  at  which  I  would  begin  to  blame  | 
academic  men,  if  it  were  necessary  to  select  i 
such  a  point,  is  not  where  their  inevitable  aca-  \ 
demic  limitations  begin,  but  where  they  slur  j 
over  the  meaning  of  those  limitations  for  sci-  j 
ence  itself,  not  to  say  for  social  practice  in  the  \ 
more  popular  sense.  That  is,  I  blame  social  sci-  | 
entists  if  they  assume  that  their  scientific  task  j 
is  finished  with  their  descriptions  and  analyses  \ 
and  evaluations.  This  attitude  has  too  much  in  j 
common  with  the  old  ecclesiastical  distinction  ^  \ 
between  the  religious  life  and  the  secular.  \1  f^? 
blame  social  scientists  if  they  fail  to  realize  that^^^v^ 
turning  valuations  into  action  is  not  something  \S{^ 
subsequent  to  science  but  the  normal  comple- 
tion of  science?)  1 

For  the  purposes  of  the  present  argument,       .  \ 
then,  I  am  not  asking  what  are  the  implications  of  j 

the  distinction  between  evaluative  and  construct-  l 
ive  processes  for  the  actual  distribution  of  I 
labor  among  academic  men,  or  for  the  division  of         1 


26a      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

labor  between  academic  and  non-academic  men. 
This  question  would  require  endless  discussion 
of  particular  cases.  Regardless  of  consequences 
one  way  or  another  in  this  respect,  I  am  now 
emphasizing  the  fact  that,  within  the  body  of 
science  but  over  and  above  the  descriptive,  ana- 
lytical, and  evaluative  functions  of  science,  the 
constructive  phase  is  the  normal  maturing  of 
the  whole. 

In  the  fourth  lecture  I  said  that  the  primary 
and  chief  function  of  science  is  to  act  as  all 
men's  proxy  in  finding  out  all  that  can  be  known 
about  what  sort  of  a  world  this  is,  and  what  we 
can  do  in  it  to^  make  life  most  worth  living. 

I  must  now  add  a  clause  to  that  statement. 

Although  life  is  functionally  vicarious  through 
and  through,  although  it  is  made  up  of  volun- 
tary and  involuntary  services  one  for  another, 
the  closer  we  get  to  the  completion  of  life  at 
any  point  the  more  we  find  it  to  be  less  a  matter 
of  doing  for  one  another  than  with  one  another. 
The  intensest  social  functioning  is  not  that  of 
benefactor  and  beneficiary  but  of  partner  and 
partner. 

I  would  carry  this  proposition  over  into  the 
realm  of  social  science.  In  the  last  analysis  social 
science  cannot  be  in  the  heads  or  the  hands  or 
the  books  of  some  men  in  trust  for  other  men. 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  261 

Social   science   has   no   way   to   complete   itself  j 

except    as    the  accomplished    habit    of    human  \ 

beings.     The  last  phase  of  social  science  is  the  j 

transmuting  of  valuations  into  life.  ^ 

There    is    no    infallible    formula    for    this 
r 
change.  (Jndeed  the  bi^  unsolved  problem  of  the 

explanatory  phase  both  of  social  science  and  of  . 
individual  psychology  is  the  mystery  of  the  gap 
between  knowing  and  doing?)  Individuals  have 
often  discoursed  sagely  upon  the  evils  of  idle- 
ness, of  improvidence,  and  of  licentiousness;  yet 
some  of  the  same  individuals  have  ruined  them- 
selves by  the  very  self-indulgence  which  their 
knowledge  condemned.  Probably  more  than  a 
majority  of  the  people  in  every  civilized  nation 
believe  today  that  war  is  an  immeasurable  evil; 
yet  each  nation  spends  a  fabulous  sum  annually 
in  direct  preparation  for  war — which  is  not 
inexplicable  under  the  circumstances — ^but  it  is 
inexplicable  that  those  same  nations  spend  rela- 
tively nothing  in  direct  assurance  of  peace. 

As  a  phenomenon  this  is  merely  an  illustra- 
tion of  the  case  discussed  in  the  seventh  lecture. 
Men  always  act  because  of  valuations  which  they 
hold,  and  after  the  event  the  kind  of  action 
chosen  shows  which  of  their  valuations  prevailed. 
Before  the  event  we  cannot  tell  with  certainty 
which   of   their  valuations   men   will   ratify   in 


262       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

action  and  which  they  will  disregard.  Here 
therefore  are  frontier  problems  for  individual 
and  social  psychology.  All  of  us  are  anxious 
for  more  light  on  these  problems.  Meanwhile  all 
the  men  whose  division  of  labor  is  persuasion 
of  children  or  adults  to  realize  the  more  rather 
than  the  less  reasonable  valuations  are  in  strenu- 
ous competition  with  all  the  drummers  for  the 
more  pleasant  rather  than  the  more  reasonable 
valuations.  It  is  in  the  interest  of  scientific  and 
human  progress  frankly  to  admit  that  we  do  not 
know  very  much  about  ways  and  means  of  in- 
ducing the  choice  of  rationally  preferable  valua- 
tions. 

For  eleven  years  I  lived  in  a  beautifully 
situated  and  in  many  respects  delightful  New 
England  college  town  of  eight  thousand  inhabit- 
ants. Few  towns  in  New  England  had  greater 
natural  advantages.  Few,  if  any,  could  justly 
boast  of  residents  on  the  average  higher  in 
the  scale  of  intelligence  and  culture  and  mo- 
rality. Yet,  although  the  residence  area  of  the 
town  was  rather  more  compactly  occupied  than  is 
usual  in  towns  of  that  type,  there  was  not  a  sewer 
in  its  territory;  nor  was  there  a  public  water 
supply.  No  one  knew  to  what  extent  his  own 
well  was  a  cesspool.  For  years,  whenever  the 
subject    was    alluded    to,   the  valuations   were 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  263 

affirmed  and  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course  that 
a  water  supply  and  a  drainage  system  would  be 
good  things  for  the  town.  But  that  was  the 
end  of  it ;  for  a  long  term  of  years  the  valuations 
had  no  more  energizing  force,  and  rather  less 
apparent  prospect  of  passing  into  action,  than  the 
valuation  of  the  same  persons  that  sectarian 
jealousy  ought  not  to  exist. 

This  case  was  not  a  freak.  It  presents  the 
ground  pattern  of  all  human  situations  after  the 
evaluative  stage  of  knowledge  has  been  reached. 
The  transition  from  the  evaluative  to  the  crea- 
tive stage  may  be  instantaneous.  It  may  not  be 
completed  in  millennia.  xQur  knowledge  of 
probabilities,  and  of  ways  and  means  of  realizing 
the  possibilities  of  converting  the  one  phase  into 
the  other  is  extremely  provincial  and  inexact. 
This,  however^  js  the  _km^^  knowledge  which 
is  rnpstjn._.demand^.-and-mO-St.difficu 
all  the  phases  of  knowledge  involved  i^^^  com- 
plete process  of  social  sciencer)  How  may  the 
only  child  in  a  family  be  led  to  form  the  habits 
prescribed  by  the  family  valuations?  How  may 
an  additional  valuation  held  by  wise  men  in 
many  nations  gain  lodgment  in  our  international 
code?  At  bottom  the  problem  is  the  same  at 
the  two  extremes.  The  man  or  the  group  that 
has  a  valuation,  and  wants  to  be  not  merely  an 


264       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

evaluator  but  a  realizer,  faces  the  same  uncer- 
tainty, whatever  the  type  of  problem.  Be  the 
individual  teacher,  preacher,  editor,  politician, 
legislator,  reformer,  or  whatever,  each  man  who 
wants  to  induce  other  men  to  convert  a  valua- 
tion into  a  condition  faces  a  distinct  task  of 
overcoming  mental  inertia.  There  is  no  sure 
way  of  measuring  that  inertia,  nor  of  applying 
a  force  sufficient  to  overcome  it.  There  will  be 
more  or  less  exact  precedents  for  the  case. 
There  will  be  much  or  little  experience  in  similar 
cases  to  furnish  useful  guidance.  The  experi- 
ence may  have  been  so  accurately  observed  and 
statistically  tabulated  that  certain  probabilities  of 
success  in  using  certain  means  may  be  antici- 
pated. Yet  after  all  each  attempt  of  men  to  in- 
duce a  constructive  effort  by  an  individual  or 
by  a  group  has  to  take  its  own  chances  with  an 
inscrutable  hiatus  between  valuation  and  voli- 
tion. Each  social  constructor  virtually  makes 
the  same  appeal  to  his  public  which  St.  Paul 
made  to  the  church  at  Philippi:  "If  you  know 
any  things  that  are  true,  honorable,  just,  pure, 
lovable,  or  respectable,  in  the  name  of  all  that 
is  virtuous  and  praiseworthy  apply  your  minds 
to  these  things." 

It  may   turn   out  that   this   initial  difficulty 
of  securing  attention  is  nine-tenths  of  the  whole 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  265 

creative  problem.  We  may  find  that  the  psy- 
chological statement  of  the  problems  of  social 
reconstruction  will  reduce  each  of  them  to  the 
technique  of  concentrating  attention.  Whether 
this  is  true  or  not,  the  stake  that  we  must  drive 
down  at  this  point  marks  the  fact  that  valuations 
do  not  realize  themselves.  There  is  the  same 
difference  between  valuations  and  corresponding 
social  conditions  that  there  is  between  a  conclu- 
sion that  a  trip  around  the  world  would  pay,  and 
actually  making  the  journey. 

If  I  were  to  be  held  strictly  accountable  for 
a  list  of  "valuations,"  in  the  sense  in  which  I 
have  defined  the  term,  particularly  if  I  meant 
valuations  both  scientifically  established  and 
generally  accepted,  I  confess  the  catalogue  would 
be  short  and  unpretentious.  We  may  claim  to 
have  scientifically  justified  considerable  sys- 
tems of  technique  for  operating  our  existing 
industrial,  political,  legal,  educational,  and  re- 
ligious institutions.  Of  course  this  technique 
is  largely  on  trial,  and  the  conditions  within 
which  it  functions  are  so  fluid  that  modifications 
of  the  technique  are  in  constant  progress.  Out- 
side of  these  technologies,  and  excluding  mere 
formulations  of  existing  conditions,  all  our  social 
sciences  together  have  not  yet  established  very 
many     available     conclusions     by     unassailable 


266       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

logical  processes.  When  we  approach  the  point 
where  social  science  should  deliver  its  results 
for  practice  we  have  to  admit,  if  we  are  honest, 
that  such  science  in  the  completest  sense  does  not 
exist.  In  its  place  we  have  merely  an  unrealized 
ideal.  The  conditions  necessary  for  achieving 
the  ideal  in  any  precise  degree  are  far  beyond 
the  present  reach  of  human  powers. 

What  follows?  Does  everything  that  I  have 
said  go  for  nothing?  Is  all  the  effort  of  all  our 
so-called  social  sciences  mere  useless  parade? 
Have  we  no  basis  at  all  for  constructive  social 
action  ? 

\l  think  we  have  a  very^_broad  and_deep  ba^is, 
a  basis  on  which  constructive_sociaL^.scientists 
may  stand_  firm.  But  we  shall  not  find  our  foot- 
ing until  we  have  freed  ourselves  of  unscientific 
|ectarianism_on  the  one  hand  and  of  unscientific 
(jtretentiousnjesi)^^ 

By  unscientific  sectarianism  I  mean  the  folly 
of  our  jealous  academic  tradition  of  the  separate- 
ness  and  self-sufficiency  of  our  perfunctory 
divisions  of  science.  By  unscientific  pretentious- 
ness I  mean  persistence  in  deluding  ourselves,  al- 
though we  deceive  no  one  else,  with  the  fiction 
that  our  scientific  structure  already  conforms  to 
its  ideals. 

With  these  qualifications  we  are  justified  as 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  267 

social  scientists  in  an  assured  and  aggressive  atti- 
tude toward  our  share  of  men's  tasks.  Just 
where  our  attainments  stand  in  the  scale  of  final 
logical  analysis  is  an  impertinent  question  when 
we  are  concerned  with  the  creative  phase  of 
social  conduct.  I  have  said  that  social  conduct 
and  the  creative  phase  of  social  science  should 
be  identical.  That  is,  in  their  objective  comple- 
tion social  science  and  social  actjon  are  ideally.^ 
and  practically  convergent.  Social  science  ha^ 
all  the  rational  apparatus  and  material  which 
human  experience  has  developed  as  its  equip- 
ment for  social  partnership.  If  it  cannot  bring 
an  infallible  factor  into  the  problems  of  plain 
men  it  may  bring  to  each  one  of  those  prob- 
lems, from  the  primary  perplexities  of  the  house- 
hold up  to  the  last  question  of  international 
relations,  all  the  rational  aids  to  judgment  which 
the  experience  of  all  men  together  has  assembled. 
To  ask  more  would  be  preposterousTj 

Nor  need  we  go  far  away  in  time  or  space 
for  pattern  instances  of  co-operative  work  be- 
tween academic  men  and  non-academic  men  in 
constructive  social  science.  The  cases  in  point 
are  not  confined  to  Germany  by  any  means. 
Not  to  speak  of  the  splendid  work  of  social  con- 
struction carried  on  by  men  and  women  in  other 
than  academic  positions — Miss  Addams  is  one  of 


X 


t/ 


268      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

the  best  illustrations — we  have  already  in  this 
country  an  inspiring  tradition  of  the  construct- 
ive combination  of  social  reason  and  social  prac- 
tice by  academic  men. 

In  Wisconsin,  for  instance,  Professors  Mc- 

■Carthy,  Meyer,  and  Reinsch  have  been  giving 
academic  men  a  new  vision  of  their  opportuni- 
ties by  their  services  to  the  state  in  connection 

i  with  the  administration  of  railroads,  and  in 
preparation  of  legislative  bills  on  many  subjects. 
In  our  own  faculty  Professors  Freund,  Hender- 
son, and  Merriam  not  only  have  proposed  valua- 
tions but  they  have  been  initiators  of  constructive 
action   in   the   city   council,    in   the    legislature, 

,and  in  many  business  concerns.  They  have 
turned  knowledge  that  has  been  derived  from 
all  men's  experience  to  immediate  practical  use. 
They  have  modified  our  actual  dealings  with  the 
criminal  and  the  dependent.  They  have  changed 
standards  and  conduct  with  reference  to  occu- 
pational diseases.  They  have  contributed  to  a 
solution  of  the  labor  question  by  promoting 
industrial  insurance.  They  have  done  much  to 
make  the  city  government  more  efficient  and 
more  honest.  Professors  Tufts  and  Mead  have 
done  similar  work  in  connection  with  the  City 
Club,  and  Professor  Jordan  also  in  promoting 
public  hygiene. 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  269 

The  point  which  I  want  most  to  urge  is  that, 
although  social  scientists  cannot  very  often 
reduce  their  judgments  to  absolute  scientific  dem- 
onstration, the  sort  of  knowledge  which  they  con- 
trol has  ajm  oral  hacking  that  amaunts-.toasight 
draft  upon  the  co-operation  of  right-minded  men, 
A  moral  infant  or  a  moral  pervert  may  deny 
that  the  conditions  discovered  by  the  ''Pittsburgh 
survey"  constitute  a  demand  for  concerted  action 
by  Americans,  from  those  most  responsible  and 
most  able  to  discharge  their  responsibility  to 
those  least  responsible  and  least  able  to  discharge 
their  responsibility.  No  morally  normal  man  can 
take  refuge  in  that  kind  of  sophistry  against  the 
force  of  the  facts.  This  instance  is  typical  of 
the  moral  situation  throughout  the  field  of  social 
science.  With  varying  degrees  of  precision  ac- 
cording to  the  situation  in  question,  we  may 
claim  morally  incontestable  scientific  sanction  for 
programs  of  social  construction  that  range  from 
insurance  of  decent  conditions  of  life  for  every 
willing  worker  to  abolition  of  war  and  humaniz- 
ing co-operation  between  all  civilized  men. 

Recurring  once  more  to  the  Verein  fUr  Social- 
politik,  I  would  emphasize  in  the  second  place 
the  judgment  which  I  expressed  in  the  begin- 
ning, viz. :    Whatever  may  have  been  the  serviced 


270      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

of  those  German  scholars  in  the  way  of  actual 
social  construction — and  the  balance  sheet  of  this 
account  has  not  yet  been  drawn  up — their  other 
kind  of  service  is  likely  to  be,  for  a  long  time 
to  come    if    not    always,    the    more  instructive 
precedent  for  American  academic  men. 
f       By  teaching,    by    addressing    many  different 
\  types  of  audience,  by  systematic  publication,  the 
members  of  the  organization  changed  the  valu- 
ations   of    Germans    both    about    social    means 
{  and  about  social  ends.    Whatever  we  in  America 
may  think  of  these  valuations  in  themselves,  they 
-have  actually  been  wrought  into  the  fabric  of 
German  life. 

In  general  a  parallel  relation  to  the  entire 
social  task  must  be  assumed  as  the  primary 
calling  of  American  academic  men.  Whatever 
we  may  be  able  to  do  more  must  be  regarded 
as  the  "good  measure  pressed  down  and  heaped 
together"  which  most  academic  men  are  only 
too  anxious  to  give  in  full  discharge  of  their 
stewjardship. 

/Our  first  and  largest  function  as  academic 
men  must  always  be  to  help  our  fellow-men  find 
ojit  what  is  true,  and  honorable,  and  J ust,  and 
pure,  and  lovable,  and  reputable.  We  shall  at 
least  have  done  a  necessary  part  if  we  do- Jio 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  PHASE  271 

more  than  keep  attention  fixed  on  these„ things, 
while  other  men  are  doing  the  subsequent  work 
of  mo£e  directly  making  these  valuations  bear 
the  ripened  fruits  ^^actionj 


LECTURE  X 
THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

The  subject  of  this  lecture  seems  to  threaten 
prophecy.  In  substance  it  will  be  resume,  pro- 
fession of  faith,  and  exhortation,  after  the  good 
old  homiletical  pattern. 

Our  generation  is  witness  that  the  case 
!  MEN  VERSUS  MEN''s  PROBLEMS  has  taken  a 
change  of  venue  from  the  theological  court  to 
\the  sociological.  The  good  man  who  sits  in  the 
seat  by  courtesy  called  St.  Peter's  is  the  most 
plaintive  evidence  of  this  transfer.  What  could 
more  surely  provoke  Olympian  laughter  than 
combination  of  claim  to  doctrinal  infallibility 
with  calls  for  intellectual  castration,  in  encyc- 
licals that  command  men  to  find  truth  not  in  pro- 
gressive study  of  the  human  lot  but  in  return 
to  St.  Charles  Borromeo!  Regret  that  "modern- 
ism" is  here,  and  edicts  to  resist  it,  might  as 
well  be  grief  that  the  present  geologic  age  is 
not  the  Paleozoic. 

In  calling  attention  to  the  fact  that  modern 
criteria  of  truth  are  not  theological  but  socio- 
logical, I  do  not  of  course  use  either  term  in  the 
special  academic  sense.  The  theology  of  all 
modernists  is  progressively  sociological,  and  by 
272 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        273 

the  latter  term  I  refer  in  this  connection  not  to  a 
special  academic  division  of  labor  but  to  the  whole 
large  method  of  social  science.     This  method  is ' 
throughout  objective  investigation  and  evaluation 
of  human  experience^  with  the  purpose  of  con-) 
structing  valuations  into  more  complete  realiza-(^ 
tions. 

The  man  with  broken  bones  needs  the  sur- 
geon. The  man  striken  with  fever  needs  nurse 
and  physician.  The  man  with  shattered  nerves 
needs  the  neurologist.  There  are  phases  and 
stages  of  social  development — whether  normal  or 
pathological  need  not  be  asked  for  our  present 
purpose — in  which  demoniacal  or  theological 
practice  is  indicated  for  minds  distressed.  If  men 
believe  in  evil  spirits  and  fear  them,  the  sorcerer 
and  the  magician  are  the  natural  recourse.  If 
men  believe  in  a  divinity  thirsty  for  human  blood 
and  fear  him,  as  in  the  stage  symbolized  by  the 
story  of  Abraham  and  Isaac,  then  the  flaming 
altar  and  the  human  sacrifice  meet  the  spiritual 
need.  If  men  believe  in  the  God  of  mediaeval 
western  theology  and  fear  him,  then  subjection  to 
dogmas  supposed  to  have  been  committed  to  his 
special  agents  is  the  only  solace  and  insurance. 

In  fact,  however,  a  differentiation  is  inevitable 
in  the  moral  world  analogous  with  that  in  the 
physical  world.     Organic  life  does  not  remain 


274      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

vegetable  alone.  It  does  not  stop  with  mollusks. 
While  vegetable  life  of  very  low  orders  remains, 
while  mollusks  survive,  the  flora  and  fauna  of 
the  earth  develop  in  countless  forms.  Along  with 
plants  which  can  scarcely  be  distinguished  from 
inorganic  matter  and  animals  which  might  easily 
be  mistaken  for  plants,  we  have  side  by  side  the 
ascending  orders  of  vegetable  and  animal  species 
including  every  variety  of  men. 

Accordingly  there  are  still  men  to  whom  no 
higher  appeal  can  be  made  than  that  of  magic. 
There  are  others  who  feel  no  mental  nor  moral 
suasion  beyond  that  of  dogma.  There  are  still 
others  to  whom  dogma  is  only  a  more  pretentious 
magic;  to  whom  the  observable  processes  of  the 
physical  and  moral  world  are  the  final  recourse 
for  expansion  and  correction  of  the  provisional 
knowledge  and  valuation  with  which  each  genera- 
tion takes  up  the  destiny  partially  worked  out  by 
all  \yho  have  gone  before. 

jWe  do  not  know  whether  the  time  will  ever 
come  when  all  the  men  living  on  this  planet  will 
be  freed  from  the  superstitions  and  the  fears  for 
which  magic  and  dogma  are  the  appropriate  pre- 
scription. We  do  not  know  that  the  time  will 
ever  come  when  men's  knowledge  of  what  is  good 
in  their  situation,  and  men's  yisions  of  unrealized 
valuations  will  supersede  all  less  rational  control- 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        275 

Igxapl-theixxonduct.  The  trend  of  social  science, 
however,  the  spirit  .al_"modernism/-l  the  out- 
reachings  of  plain  men's  desires  wherever  they^ 
are  unfettered  enough  to  be  genuine,  all  make 
stropgly  and  at  last  consciously  toward  this  goal. 

Tl  do  not  say  and  I  do  not  think  that  social  ^ 
science  can  ever  be  a  substitute  for  religionj    It) 
is    getting   plainer   and    plainer,   however,    that 
social  science,  in  the  sense  in  which  I  have  usedr 
the  term  in  these  lectures,  is  the  only  rationale 
body  for  religion. 

No  man  has  lived  his  Hfe  to  the  full  who  is 
not  at  last,  in  one  preserve  of  his  personality,  a 
mystic.  It  is  a  grub's  life  not  to  feel  out  after 
the  connections  of  what  we  can  know  with  what 
we  cannot  know;  after  the  fulfilment  of  what 
we  have  been  or  might  have  been  in  what  we  may  , 
be.  From  first  to  last  religions  have  been  men's  ; 
more  or  less  conscious  attempts  to  give  finite  lifef 
its  infinite  rating.  Science  can  never  be  an' 
enemy  of  religion.  fStop  the  stress  and  strain, 
the  rush  and  roar,  the  fuss  and  bluff  of  modern 
life  long  enough  for  the  deeply  human  in  us  to 
have  its  chance,  and  the  more  science  we  have 
the  more  are  we  awed  and  lured  by  the  mystery 
beyond  our  ken;  the  more  do  the  unsatisfied 
longings  in  us  yearn  for  larger  interpretation] 

And  this  is  the  heart  of  religion.     It  is  the 


276      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

investment  of  such  values  as  we  have  along  with 
the  best  labor  within  our  power  to  make  them 
productive.  We  have  no  other  scope  for  this 
work  but  in  our  intercourse  with  our  fellow-men. 
In  this  view  social  science  carried  into  the  crea- 
tive stage  is  the  only  conceivable  body  in  which 
religion  can  be  vital. 

[Theological  religions  have  always  been  un-' 
genuine  because  they  have  made  the  mystical  the 
key  to  the  real.  The  religion  _oi  social  science^ 
wjll  make  the  real  the  key  to  the  mysticaO  While 
men  are  bound  to  achieve  this  inversion  in  pro- 
portion as  they  become  sophisticated,  while  men 
are  bound  in  proportion  as  they  conquer  igno- 
rance and  banish  terrors  of  their  own  invention 
to  find  the  meaning  of  life  less  in  escaping  un- 
known evils  than  in  realizing  known  goods,   it 

/does  not  follow^  that  they  are  bound  to  limit  the 
J  meaning  of  their  lives  to  the  measure  of  experi- 

I  ence.  On  the  contrary,  the  more  we  compare  the 
span  of  experience  with  the  sweep  of  mystery 
within  which  we  are  inclosed  the  more  certainly 
will  our  known  life  borrow  some  of  its  value 
from  our  thought  of  the  infinite  unknown. 

This  again  is  merely  a  modern  way  of  ex- 
pressing a  reality  of  religion  which  in  some  degree 
the  most  spiritually  minded  men  of  all  faiths 
have  held  in  common. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        277 

^  all  seriousness  then,  and  with  careful 
weighing  of  my  words,  I  register  my  belief  thax 
social  science  is  the  holiest  sacrament  open  to 
men.  It  is  the  holiest  because  it  is  the  wholest 
career  within  the  terms  of  human  life.  Restrain- 
ing myself  from  prediction,  and  holding  strictly 
to  confession,  I  am  able  to  foresee  no  other 
development  for  religion  than  the  progressive 
sloughing  off  of  its  ritualistic  attachments  and 
corresponding  enrichment  of  its  realistic  content. 
The  whole  circumference  of  social  science  is  the 
indicated  field  for  those  "works"  without  which 
the  apostle  of  "salvation  by  faith"  declared  that 
faith  is  dead  J 

Throughout  these  lectures  •  I  have  repeatedly 
expressed  or  implied  a  conception  of  the  scope 
of  academic  social  science  which  may  be  com- 
pared>with  the  function  of  th^  "sailing  master," 
if  there  still  is  an  officer  of  that  title  upon  a 
battleship.     Someone  must  be  responsible- Jonall  I 
the  calculations  upon   which  the  navigation   of/ 
the  ship  is  based.    Perhaps  a  better  parallel  would'^ 
be  the  officers  and  directors  of  an  industrial  plant. 
They  must  knowas  much  as  possible  about  the 
actual^  and  conceivable  conditions  of  demand  for 
thdr  pmduct  and  a^^  and  conceiv- 

able  lirnitations  of  their  ability  to   supply  the 
demand.     If  the  operatives  in  the  plant  were  as 


278       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

free  to  use  or  disuse  the  conclusions  of  the 
officers  and  directors  as  men  in  general  are  to  do 
What  they  please  with  formulations  of  social 
science,  the  likeness  would  be  more  exact. 

To  describe  this  situation  literally :  Men  are 
born  into  a  physical  and  a  social  process  which 
sets  their  task  and  circumscribes  their  destiny. 
Whether  particular  men  ever  become  conscious 
of  it  or  not,  the  experience  of  men  in  general  has 
always  been  first  of  all  assumption  of  a  scale  of 
meanings  to  be  credited  to  the  surroundings,  and 
adoption  of  a  corresponding  scale  of  valuations 
assigned  to  alternatives  of  conduct  in  view  of 
these  meanings.  The  process  of  arriving  at  these 
interpretations  has  mounted  from  scarcely  more 
than  vegetative  adaptation  to  habitat  up  to  his- 
torical conflicts  of  ideas  and  civilizations.  The 
intellectual  reflection  of  this  process  has  varied 
from  folklore  to  philosophy.  [Social  science  is 
that  part  of  the  activity  of  modern  men  which  is 
charged  with  the  function  of  investigating  these 
social  meanings  and  social  values  with  all  the 
apparatus  which  present  knowledge  can  devise 
and  which  present  resources  can  supply!) 

Throughout  these  lectures  I  have  treated  these 
investigations  of  social  meanings  and  social  values 
as  the  crowning  function  of  social  science  in  its 
strictly  academic  aspects.     Leaving  the  creative 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        279 

phase  of  social  science  out  of  view  for  the 
moment,  the  functions  of  social  description, 
analysis,  and  evaluation  are  the  pre-conditions  of 
social  construction  upon  a  basis  of  reason  corre- 
sponding with  the  complexity  of  present  social 
conditions.  In  this  sense  and  to  this  extent, 
therefore,  the  objective  social  process  will  be 
irrational,  or  at  best  incompletely  reasoned,  unless 
the  indicated  academic  processes  are  performed 
by  social  science. 

For  instance,  in  recent  years  we  have  become 
familiar  with  variations  of  the  proposition  that 
the  aims  of  modern  men  have  turned  wealth, 
which  is  only  a  means,  into  the  paramount  end. 
Both  Simmel  and  Sombart  have  made  out  strong 
cases  in  support  of  this  proposition.  In  so  far 
as  the  assertion  is  true,  it  involves  the  correspond- 
ing proposition  that  our  modern  program  de- 
grades men  from  their  appropriate  place  as  ends 
and  reduces  them  to  the  rank  of  means. 

There  is  probably  no  more  urgent  need  among 
civilized  men  at  this  moment  than  knowledge  of 
the  precise  situation  referred  to  in  these  propo- 
sitions. Are  we  geared  into  a  machinery  which 
is  grinding  out  the  bankruptcy  of  civilization  by 
consuming  men  as  its  raw  material  and  giving 
back  only  wealth  as  its  output?    Or  are  we  pro- 


28o      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

gressively   sublimating   our   wealth   in    superior 
types  of  human  beings  and  social  conditions? 

Surely  civilizations  never  consciously  con- 
fronted a  more  vital  question  about  their  own 
condition  than  these  propositions  present  to  think- 
ing men  the  world  over  today.  Are  we  con- 
suming more  human  values  in  making  our  wealth 
than  are  given  hack  in  the  making  and  the  using? 
Not  a  few  men  who  are  inclined  to  treat  mere 
repetition  of  the  question  as  an  offense  against 
society  have  no  doubt  that  something  like  the 
mistake  alleged  was  the  fault  of  earlier  civiliza- 
tions. It  is  comparatively  easy  to  look  back  now^ 
and  to  detect  the  oncoming  of  social  bankruptcies 
in  the  regimes  of  fist-law,  of  military  exploita- 
tion, of  absolutism,  of  chattel  slavery.  It  is  very 
hard  for  men  who  have  nothing  to  gain  and 
possibly  much  to  lose  by  unfavorable  social  diag- 
nosis calmly  to  entertain  the  thought  that  their 
own  civilization  may  possibly  be  attempting  to 
perpetuate  a  social  fallacy. 

^  Who_shalLpas5^  upotijthis  question  ?  Who 
shall  determine  whether  or  not  there  is  a  case 
against  our  capitalistic  civilization?  Who  shall 
decide  whether  wx  are  moving  toward  the 
apotheosis  of  wealth  or  the  apotheosis  of  men? 
Shall  we  leave  it  to  the  ex-par te  judgment  of 
capitalistic  interests,  or  shall  we  refer  it  to  the 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        281 

most  judicial  commission  of  inquiry  which  it 
would  be  possible  to  establish?  Could  a  more 
competent  commission  be  proposed  than  such  an 
institute  of  social  science  as  we  have  imagined, 
or  ultimately  a  chain  of  such  institutes  correcting 
one  another  in  all  the  civilized  nations ?J 

In  thus  reiterating  that  investigation  is  the 
fundamental  function  of  social  science,  I  admit 
that  there  are  other  important  functions  of  social 
sciences,  but  I  insist  that  all  their  importance  is  | 
secondary  to  that  service  by  which  they  open  the  1 
way  to  larger  realizations  of  life.     By  "larger 
realizations  of  life"  I  mean  not  merely  richer 
mental  furnishings  of  individuals,  but  more  pur- 
poseful and  more  extensive  functionings  between  . 
individuals    in    developing    superior    types    of] 
association. 

I  noticed  in  passing  that  some  men  extol  his- 
tory not  as  science  but  as  art.  I  might  have  said 
that  less  frequently  the  other  social  sciences  are 
appraised  highest  when  treated  as  arts.  This 
does  not  mean  that  the  men  who  so  judge  are 
referring  to  the  ultimate  utility  of  these  sciences 
in  molding  social  conduct.  It  means  that  these 
men  are  thinking  of  the  mental  and  literary  tech- 
nique which  may  be  developed  in  handling  the 
material  of  these  sciences.  The  people  who  think 
in  this  way  remind  me  of  the  types  whose  first 


282       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

interest  in  an  opera  or  an  athletic  contest  or  a 
stock  show  or  a  social  settlement  is  in  its  features 
as  a  "society"  affair.  Whether  an  opera  or  an 
athletic  contest  or  a  stock  show  or  a  social  settle- 
ment is  worth  supporting,  is  a  question  by  itself ; 
but  to  use  either  as  a  mere  occasion  for  social 
preenings,  for  the  display  of  ability  to  out-waste 
and  out-pose  one's  social  rivals,  rather  insolently 
begs  the  question.  The  subject-matter  of  the 
social  sciences  lends  itself  to  artistic  treatment  to 
be  sure,  but  no  one  with  a  sane  sense  of  propor- 
tion will  imagine  that  such  treatment  is  first  in 
importance.  Engage  the  social  sciences  if  you 
will  as  caterers  to  your  aesthetic  demands;  but 
have  the  decency  when  you  do  so  to  list  them 
where  they  belong — in  the  class  with  the  dance 
and  the  drama. 

Again,  as  I  have  observed,  it  is  very  hard  to 
get  attention  to  social  science  beyond  the  demands 
of  school  curricula.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  belittle 
the  educational  uses  of  social  science.  It  seems 
to  me  as  inevitable  as  it  is  desirable  that  all  our 
education,  from  the  kindergarten  up,  must  grow 
more  and  more  sociological  in  a  sense  derived 
from  that  in  which  I  used  the  term  in  connection 
^with  religion.  Our  schooling  will  increase  in 
value  in  proportion  as  it  sophisticates  us  in  the 
literal  processes  of  life.    But  after  all  how  naive 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        283 

and  partial  our  knowledge  of  any  social  reality 
is  at  best,  even  after  we  have  received  all  that  the 
schools  can  give!  A  forenoon  in  an  editorial 
office  or  a  grand  jury  room  or  a  directors'  meet- 
ing, an  evening  in  a  precinct  caucus  or  a  city 
council  or  a  state  or  national  legislature,  would 
be  below  the  average  in  action,  if  it  did  not  con- 
tain enough  that  he  had  never  thought  of  to  make 
the  most  intelligent  Doctor  of  Philosophy  in 
social  science  conscious  of  gaps  in  his  knowledge. 
The  academic  phases  of  social  science  are  valu- 
able not  so  much  for  the  information  about  life 
which  they  impart,  as  for  the  ability  to  learn 
about  life  which  they  develop,  and  for  the  con- 
viction of  the  importance  of  finding  out  about 
life  which  they  stimulate.  Social  science  would 
be  little  more  than  mental  gymnastics  for  ado- 
lescents if  its  pedagogical  uses  contained  its  chief 
value. 

No !  Social  science  is  not  an  adolescent  but 
an  adult  function! 

We  are  just  beginning  to  emerge  from  the 
semi-conscious  juvenile  stage  of  social  self- 
knowledge.  We  have  taken  many  hasty  and 
partial  inventories  of  social  assets.  We  have 
ventured  numerous  limited  social  experiments. 
Some  of  these  have  been  rash,  some  timid,  all 
relatively  superficial.  They  have  revealed  no  large 


284      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

mature  conception  of  social  destiny.  If  they  have 
been  occasionally  ambitious  and  general  in  their 
proclamations,  they  have  at  the  same  time  been 
vague  and  fatuous  in  their  details.  Our  con- 
temporary social  science  as  a  whole  roughly  re- 
sembles the  individual  consciousness  of  the  typical 
college  boy  three  months  after  graduation.  The 
glamor  of  being  a  Senior  has  passed  into  the 
gloom  of  doubt  about  ability  to  get  a  grip  on  the 
world.  The  general  life  of  men  which  from  the 
undergraduate  standpoint  seemed  a  stupid  sim- 
plicity, to  be  settled  with  in  a  few  patronizing 
phrases,  has  become  complex  and  unwieldy.  It 
is  big,  puzzling,  and  noncommittal. 

It  has  not  yet  fairly  dawned  on  the  thought 
of  the  world  that  human  Hfe  is  not  an  affair  of  a 
few  homely  classifications.  To  be  born;  to  be 
nursed  from  a  puling  babe  to  a  bawling  brat; 
to  be  taught  the  commonplace  lore  of  life;  to  find 
one's  job;  to  mate;  to  propagate  one's  kind;  to 
keep  up  the  motions  of  one's  group;  to  gather 
a  few  passing  gratifications;  to  die — ^these  are 
not  the  dimensions  of  human  destiny. 

Men  are  in  at  the  early  stages  of  an  enter- 
prise which  has  no  limits  that  human  knowl- 
edge can  discover.  Certain  hither  landmarks  we 
can  fix,  but  the  outbound  movement  of  human 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        285 

experience  projects  an  orbit  that  we  have  no 
power  to  calculate. 

The  human  race  has  a  material  endowment 
which  is  beyond  our  means  of  appraisal.  We 
have  developed  a  fairly  prophetic  technique  for 
extracting  nature's  wealths.  We  have  sampled 
the  treasures  at  our  command,  and  we  have 
assured  ourselves  that  completer  control  of  them 
is  within  our  reach.  These  supplies,  these  mate- 
rials, these  energies,  these  efficiencies  are  the 
social  inheritance,  along  with  the  rudimentary 
apparatus,  from  alphabet  and  multiplication  table 
to  our  engineerings  and  our  traffickings  and  our 
legislatings,  by  which  we  have  conducted  our- 
selves thus  far  in  our  pioneering. 

In  a  meager  way  too  we  have  tried  out  per- 
sonal capacities.  We  have  taken  preliminary 
measures  of  bodily  strength  and  skill.  We  have 
shown  ability  to  endure  and  to  perform  up  to 
certain  marks. 

In  like  casual  fashion  we  have  tested  sample 
men's  intellectual  competence.  We  have  gained 
certain  provisional  experiences  about  what  men 
can  do  with  their  minds  when  they  devote  them- 
selves to  mental  effort.  We  have  achieved  cer- 
tain grades  of  mental  value  of  many  types,  from 
Euclid  to  Edison,  from  Aesculapius  to  Koch, 
from  Homer  to  Goethe. 


286      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

More  than  this,  we  have  discovered  moral 
strengths.  We  have  not  only  learned  in  our  life 
apprenticeship  that  certain  qualities  of  conduct 
which  we  call  virtues  are  good  for  those  who 
have  the  use  of  them,  but  we  have  found  that 
men  actually  have  it  in  them  to  achieve  these 
qualities.  Men  may  be  patient,  and  industrious, 
and  strenuous,  and  dependable,  and  considerate, 
and  tolerant,  and  steadfast,  and  generous,  and 
enterprising.  They  may  not  only  develop  these 
values  to  a  degree  that  cements  family  relations 
and  harmonizes  community  intercourse,  but  in 
some  men  one  or  more  of  these  values  may  be  so 
large  that  they  bless  races,  nations,  generations. 

We  have  even  made  beginnings  in  social 
achievement  in  the  strict  sense.  We  have  dis- 
covered rudimentary  abilities  to  co-operate.  We 
have  found  ourselves  justifying  ourselves  to 
ourselves  when  we  have  formed  large  and  dur- 
able associations.  We  have  found  our  horizon 
widening  and  the  measure  of  realization  enlar- 
ging as  we  have  become  members  one  of  another 
in  more  elaborate  interdependencies.  We  have 
discovered  that  values  which  we  prize  may  be 
gained  by  men  in  organization  which  could  not 
be  achieved  by  men  as  individuals. 

"And  it  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we  shall 
be!"   In    youthful    exuberance,    stimulated    by 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        287 

some  of  these  first  samples  from  the  vintage  of 
human  experience,  men  have  pictured  Utopias 
as  the  goal  of   social   endeavor.      This   is   the 
world's  Sophomorism.     Not  Utopia-painting  but' 
social  edification  is  the  task  of  maturing  men ;  \ 
and  ^ocial   science7Ts   the  methodologyjof  that  / 
task.     Our   human    situation    indicates    not   the 
duty   of   fitting  our  conduct   into   certain   pre- 
ordained categories,  but  the  opportunity  to  work 
out  the  possibilities  latent  in  the  resources  which 
we  have  sampled. 

Our  outlook  is  over  an  uncharted  future 
in  which  men  may  employ  their  intelligence 
more  and  more  economically  to  realize  the  attain- 
able in  all  the  directions  into  which  our  experi- 
ence thus  far  has  given  us  glimpses.  It  is  not 
men's  business  to  determine  in  advance  what 
manner  of  men  or  what  type  of  society  will  be 
ultimate.  It  is  our  destiny  to  conserve  those 
human  values  which  we  are  at  present  able  to 
appreciate,  and  to  combine  our  energies  to  the  end 
of  refining  those  values  and  making  them  more 
general,  while  we  continue  the  immemorial  pro- 
cess of  discovering  and  realizing  further  values 

If  a  sound,  strong,  skilful  body  is  good  for 
anyone,  there  can  be  no  social  wisdom  which 
slights  the  basic  businesses  whose  function  is  to 
secure  the  conditions  of  life   in   which   sound, 


288       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

Strong,  skilful  bodies  will  be  the  rule  for  the 
largest  possible  proportion  of  men  and  women. 

If  intellectual  force,  and  grasp,  and  poise, 
and  penetration  are  good  for  anybody,  they  must 
be  counted  as  parts  of  the  outfit  with  which  it 
must  be  the  program  of  life  to  equip  as  fully 
as  possible  steadily  increasing  quotas  of  human 
beings. 

If  the  qualities  that  we  call  virtues,  the  dis- 
positions and  the  attitudes  toward  one  another 
in  which  men  recognize  one  another's  worth  and 
respond  to  one  another's  needs,  are  good  for 
anybody,  then  it  is  an  abortive  human  condition 
in  which  these  qualities  are  exceptional.  It  is 
a  state  of  arrested  development  if  these  human 
values  are  mostly  dissociated,  some  achieved  by 
one  individual,  some  by  another,  and  seldom 
harmoniously  constructed  into  a  single  person- 
ality. Life  will  begin  to  be  mature  only  when 
these  elements  of  human  value  are  relatively 
universal.  Our  human  task  is  therefore,  in  one 
more  detail,  intelligent  cultivation  of  the  basic 
virtues.  And  this  implies  that  human  wisdom 
must  compass  the  means  within  men's  reach  of 
establishing  conditions  most  favorable  to  the 
development  of  the  basic  virtues. 

If  all  this  and  this  only  were  provided  for 
literally  in  accordance  with  the  schedule,  men 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        289 

would  still  be  merely  in  the  pre-creative  stage  of 
social  destiny.  It  would  be  the  period  of  nebu- 
lous star-stuff,  unformed  and  void,  before  the 
atoms  had  begun  to  arrange  themselves  into 
worlds. 

Fortunately  men  come  to  consciousness  in  a^ 
later  evolutionary  stage  than  this.  We  know 
nothing  of  an  utterly  non-social  condition.  So 
far  as  our  knowledge  goes  men  are  never  literally 
individuals.  Within  narrower  or  wider  diam- 
eters they  are  always  dependents  on  one  another, 
and  even  in  some  degree  functions  of  one 
another.  The  social  task  is  at  last  to  find  the  ut- 
most attainable  terms  of  this  human  interdepend- 
ence^ B£L^^  !iH?iJ^^l^P^  ^Ht  ^^  ^D^l^^v^^^t.  How 
may  we  <CQ-operate4n  such  ways  that  the  values 
which  we  have  learned  to  appreciate  may  be 
most  abundant,  most  diffused,  most  intelligently 
rated  for  what  they  are  at  any  moment  worth 
as  ends,  most  rationally  employed  for  what  they 
are  at  the  same  time  worth  as  means  ?  How 
may  we  ^|iHir"one  anblheFjiest  to  visualize^s 
much  of  the  common  enterprise  as  comes  within 
the  range!) f  human  understanding?  How  may 
we    qi5nsent    with  to    make    our 

individual  valuations  and  programs  constructive  / 
elements  in  the  total  human  process?  How  may/ 
we  ^mbine  with  one  another  Mn  such  ways  that 


290       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

each  of  us  will  individually  achieve  and  realize 
most  when  he  is  counting  most  toward  the  com- 
mon enterprise? 

Here  is  the  largest  problem  of  social  science, 
and  the  literal  business  of  scholars  is  to  make 
this  rendering  of  men's  destiny  the  broad  sur- 
vey within  which  they  will  organize  their  special 
tasks. 
/        Science  then  is  not  at  la^t  Jto  the^sjDecialis^ 
\  but  to  the  humanist.     Science  is  the  intellectual 
i  machinery  by  use  of  which  the  whole  physical, 
( Jiiental^.  and   social   d^^^^  mankind   is   to 

;  proceed. 

^  The  situation  recalls  us  once  more  then  to 
Jhe  main  motive  of  these  lectures,  namely, '  the 
unity  of  social  science.  ^ 

Perhaps  my  account  of  the  tasks  of  social 
science  seems  to  leave  only  the  alternatives — 
either  abandonment  of  the  attempt  to  be  a  social 
scientist,  because  the  demands  of  social  science 
so  far  exceed  the  powers  of  a  single  mind,  and 
because  we  have  no  sufficient  organization  of 
social  science  to  supplement  the  efforts  of  indi- 
viduals, or  adoption  of  a  narrower  and  lower 
ideal. 

I  certainly  have  stated  the  demands  of  social 
science  in  terms  that  place  it  beyond  the  con- 
trol of  a  single  mind.     My  own  conclusion  is 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        291 

not  that  the  ambitious  student  of  human  Hfe 
must  give  up  in  despair,  or  resign  himself  to 
the  role  of  a  dabbler  in  social  details  without 
effort  to  find  their  relations.  [  My  (conclusion's 
that  the  jnost_  isolated  student  of  social  science, 
the  one  most  confined  to  some  partial  and 
primary  phase  of  human  experience,  may  help 
more  than  he  could  otherwise  to  promote  the 
maturing  of  the  social_process  if  he  will  place 
himself  within  the  perspective  drawn  by  this 
conception  of  _human  destiny  and  of  the  science 
of  human  experience.     One  may  steady  one's 

own  course  both  as  a thinker  and  as  a  doer, 

and  one  may  be  a  more  competent  guide  of 
others,  simply  by  refusing  to  let  a  single  kind 
of  specialist  in  social^cience^  mold  one^^^ 
tion  or  interpretation  or  evaluation  of  any 
passage  of  experience.  '  If  you  call  yourself  a 
historian,  do  not  let  historians  only,  still  less 
historians  of  a  single  type,  predetermine  your 
conclusions  about  any  portion  of  experience 
which  you  may  study.  Read  the  historians  of 
course,  but  read  too  the  economists  about  their 
interests  in  the  same  experience.  The  chances  are 
that  they  will  modify  your  views  of  the  relations 
involved,  if  you  had  gained  them  solely  from 
historians.  Read  the  political  scientists,  sociolo- 
gists, social  psychologists,  and  moralists  on  the 


292       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

same  situation.  You  will  not  arrive  by  this  pro- 
cess at  conclusive  results,  but  you  will  arrive  at 
qualitative  perceptions  which  will  contain  more 
balanced  estimate  of  the  human  reality  presented 
by  the  experience  than  you  could  arrive  at  by 
equal  time  and  energy  expended  along  the  line 
of  a  single  abstraction. 

I  have  not  asserted  and  I  do  not  intend  to 
assert  that  the  only  knowledge  of  experience 
worth  having  is  the  science  of  experience  as 
I  have  projected  it.  I  have  been  rehearsing 
some  of  the  things  which  we  must  reckon  with 
if  science  in  the  larger  sense  of  the  word  is 
our  end.  One  may  be  a  faithful  mother  without 
being  a  physiologist.  One  may  be  a  good 
housekeeper  without  being  a  chemist.  One  may 
be  a  merchant  or  manufacturer  without  being 
a  political  economist.  One  may  also  be  a  valu- 
able citizen  without  being  a  social  scientist. 

t  Each  of  the  types  just  named  may  have 
developed^  veiy  circumstantial itheo^o  f  its  own 
particular  sphere  of  action.  Each  of  these  theo- 
ries may  furthermore  be  a  respectable  fragment 
of  science;  or  at  least  it  may  be  an  arrange- 
ment of  a  body  of  knowledge  which  would  be 
useful  material  to  be  worke^  into  comprehensive 
science.  These  arrangements  of  knowledge  for 
specific    uses    in    particular    circumstances    are 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        293 

worth  what  they  are  worth;  and  I  undertake  no 
comparison  of  their  worth  with  that  of  the  com- 
prehensive science  of  society  which  I  have  de- 
scribed, still  less  disparagement  of  them  in  their 
appropriate  function.  I  simply  point  out  that 
they  are  not  social  science  in  the  largest  sense, 
and  that  I  am  not  dealing  with  these  non-scientific 
goods.  I  am  concerned  with  the  prospectus  of 
the  most  comprehensive  science  of  society  which 
it  is  reasonable  to  project.  / 

But  I  must  repeat  my' plea  for  the  ideal  of 
social  science  not  merely  as  a  career  for  mature 
men,  but  as  a  vocation  now  so  clearly  defined  that 
it  calls  for  combinations  of  large  numbers  of  the 
best  equipped  men  to  carry  on  the  tasks  of  social 
science  in  co-operation. 

In  the  reply  to  Treitschke,  which  in  some 
respects  bears  the  same  relation  to  the  social 
policy  of  the  new  German  empire  which  Luther's 
theses  bore  to  the  Reformation,  Schmoller 
sounded  this  one  discordant  note:  ''Science  is 
always  genuinely  promoted  only  through  indi- 
vidual investigation." 

Collectivism  was  the  patrimony  of  the  Ger- 
mans. On  the  whole,  Germans  have  always 
acted  from  coUectivistic  principles,  first  within 
their  petty  principalities,  then  since  1872  in  their 


294      THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

united  empire.  There  was  a  period,  however, 
which  we  may  place  between  the  dates  1812 
and  1872,  when  the  normal  development  of 
their  theories  in  social  science  was  embarrassed 
by  an  intermixture  of  thoroughly  exotic  indi- 
vidualism. Schmoller  was  virtually  demanding 
the  return  of  German  social  science  to  first  prin- 
ciples. It  is  therefore  the  more  astonishing 
that,  in  the  very  argument  in  which  he  is  con- 
tending for  social  and  civic  co-operation  as  the 
only  morality,  he  seemed  to  assert  that  indi- 
vidualism in  science  is  a  matter  of  course. 

In  point  of  fact  there  never  has  been  more 
individualism,  in  the  sense  of  isolated  research, 
in  German  science  than  there  has  been  individu- 
alism, in  the  sense  of  uncorrelated  public  action, 
in  German  civic  life.  While  there  has  been  com- 
paratively little  closely  organized  research  on  a 
large  scale,  it  is  also  true  that  publication  in  Ger- 
many has  been  so  inexpensive  that  every  investi- 
gator in  every  science  in  Germany  for  the  last 
century  has  virtually  carried  on  his  work  under 
the  stimulus  and  correction  of  all  other  investi- 
gators in  all  other  sciences.  That  which  German 
scholars  more  than  any  others  have  done  well 
without  close  co-operation  I  hope  American  schol- 
ars at  no  distant  day  will  begin  to  do  better 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        295 

by  means  of  the  sort  of  co-operation  which  I 
have  suggested  in  these  lectures.^ 

I  would  not  if  I  could  fuse  all  social  scien- 
tists nor  even  all  of  a  single  social  scientist  into 
an  impersonal  investigating  medium.     I  would 
not  extinguish  scholarly  individuality  in  an  insti- 
tute of    social    science  in  which  men  would    be 
merely  so  many  cogs  in  a  scientific  machine.     I 
would  not  if  I  could  organize  a  scientific  society 
able  to  absorb  all  of  each  investigator's  person- 
ality into  its  corporate  program.     I  am  yearn- 
ing for  no  socialistic  foreordination  of  medioc-  y 
rity.     Science  can  enjoy   full  health  only  with 
plenty  of    latitude    for  individual   initiative   in 
research.    Scholars  must  have  all  the  liberty  they; 
can  use  to  run  down  clues  of  their  own.     On 
the  other  hand,  scientific  health  will  never  develop 
maximum  scientific  strength  till  organization  of  . 
research  fully  recognizes  as  the  law  of  science,  / 
as  of  the  rest  of  life,  that  "we  are  members  one  \ 
of  another."  ^ 

Of  all  President  Harper's  published  addresses 
the  one  which  reveals  most  of  his  appraisal 
of  the   function  of  education,  and  most  of  his 

^  It  is  worth  recording  that  twenty-four  years  later,  in 
his  inaugural  address  as  Rektor  of  the  University  of  Berlin, 
Schmoller  also  Emphasized  the  co-operative  side  of  research. 


296       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

aspirations  as  a  university  builder,  is  entitled 
"The  University  and  Democracy."  If  I  might 
substitute  for  the  word  university  the  term  social 
science,  which  I  have  been  discussing,  I  might 
say  that  in  spirit  if  not  in  detail  Dr.  Harper's 
words  anticipated  all  that  has  been  said  in  this 
course  about  the  mission  of  social  science.  I 
close  then  with  another  rendering  of  my  own 
thought,  especially  the  thought  emphasized  in  the 
last  lecture,  in  Dr.  Harper's  words: 

As  a  student,  for  many  years,  of  the  Old  Testament, 
the  thoughts  and  the  forms  of  thought  of  the  ancient 
Hebrews  have  made  deep  impressions  on  my  mind.  In 
the  course  of  their  long-continued  history  they  passed 
through  nearly  every  form  of  life,  from  that  of  savages 
to  that  of  highest  civilization,  and  they  lived  under  nearly 
every  form  of  government,  from  the  patriarchal,  through 
the  tribal,  the  monarchical,  and  the  hierarchical.  The 
history  of  no  other  nation  furnishes  parallels  of  so  varied 
or  so  suggestive  a  character.  I  beg  the  privilege  of  draw- 
ing my  form  of  expression  from  their  history;  and  I  do 
so  with  the  more  interest  because,  to  all  men  who  have 
religious  sympathies,  whether  Jew  or  Christian,  whether 
Roman  Catholic  or  Protestant,  these  forms  of  expression 
are  familiar,  and  by  all  they  are  held  sacred. 

Democracy  has  been  given  a  mission  to  the  world, 
and  it  is  of  no  uncertain  character.  I  wish  to  show  that 
the  university  is  the  prophet — that  is,  the  spokesman — 
of  democracy.  Democracy,  if  it  continue,  must  include 
the  masses  and  maintain  their  sympathy  and  interest 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        297 

The  truth  is,  democracy  has  scarcely  yet  begun  to 
understand  itself.  It  is  comparatively  so  young  and 
untried,  and  the  real  experiment  has  been  of  so  short  a 
duration  that  it  could  not  be  otherwise.  Democracy 
needs  teachers  who  shall  say,  know  thyself;  messengers 
who  shall  bring  light  to  shine  upon  dark  places.  There 
is  great  danger  that  the  next  step,  at  any  time,  may  be  a 
wrong  step.  Some  such  have  already  been  taken;  and 
history  shows  the  terrible  cost  of  being  compelled  to  go 
back  and  start  anew.  Democracy  is  now  able  to  walk 
alone,  but  not  infrequently  something  occurs  which  leads 
us  to  think  that  there  has  not  yet  been  time  enough  to 
learn  how  a  fair  and  even  balance  may  at  all  times  be 
maintained 

Democracy  surely  has  a  mission;  and  if  so,  that  mis- 
sion is,  in  a  word,  righteousness.  It  is  an  interesting 
fact  that  all  the  great  religious  truths  were  worked  out 
in  the  popular  mind  before  they  were  formulated  by  the 
thinkers.  The  world  is  waiting  for  the  working  out  of 
the  doctrine  of  national  righteousness  through  democracy, 
and  no  effort  to  formulate  the  doctrine  beforehand  will 
avail.  But  the  day  is  coming  when  the  thought  will  have 
become  tangible  enough  to  be  expressed.  The  popular 
mind  will  not  be  able  to  do  this  service.  The  prophet, 
whose  discerning  eye  reads  the  thought  in  the  heart  of 
democracy  itself,  expressed  in  heart  throbs  reaching  to 
the  very  depths  of  human  experience — the  prophet,  I  say, 
will  then  formulate  the  thinking  which  will  make  earth 
indeed  a  paradise 

The  university  is  the  prophet  who  is  to  hold  high  the 
great  ideal  of  democracy,  its  mission  for  righteousness; 
and  by  repeated  formulation  of  the  ideal,  by  repeated 
presentations    of    its    claims,    make    it    possible    for    the 


298       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

people  to  realize  in  tangible  form  the  thought  which  has 
come  up  from  their  deepest  heart.  The  university,  I 
maintain,  is  the  prophetic  interpreter  of  democracy;  the 
prophet  of  the  past,  in  all  its  vicissitudes;  the  prophet  of 
the  present  in  all  its  complexity;  the  prophet  of  the 
future  in  all  its  possibilities 

The  university  is  (second)  a  priest,  established  to  act 
as  mediator  in  the  religion  of  democracy,  wherever  media- 
tion may  be  possible;  established  to  lead  the  souls  of 
men  and  nations  into  close  communication  with  the  com- 
mon soul  of  all  humanity;  established  to  stand  apart 
from  other  institutions,  and  at  the  same  time  to  mingle 
closely  with  the  constituent  elements  of  the  people;  estab- 
lished to  introduce  whosoever  will  into  the  mysteries  of 
the  past  and  present,  whether  solved  or  still  unsolved. 

Among  the  priests  of  olden  times  some  groveled 
about  in  the  mire  of  covetousness  and  pollution,  encour- 
aging men  to  sin  that  they  (the  priests)  might  have  the  sin- 
offering;  some  were  perfunctory  officials,  with  whom  the 
letter  of  service  was  all-sufficient;  some  were  true  media- 
tors between  man  and  God,  and  teachers  of  the  holiest 
truths;  some  of  them  in  their  ministrations  of  divine 
things  reached  so  near  to  God  himself  as  to  exhibit  in 
their  lives  and  thoughts  the  very  essence  of  divinity. 

It  is  just  so  with  universities.  Some  are  deaf  to  the 
cry  of  suffering  humanity;  some  are  exclusive  and  shut 
up  within  themselves;  but  the  true  university,  the  uni- 
versity of  the  future,  is  one  the  motto  of  which  will  be: 
Service  for  mankind,  wherever  mankind  is,  whether 
within  scholastic  walls  or  without  those  walls  and  in  the 
world  at  large 

I  have  not  forgotten  that  the  Old  Testament  Messiah 
was  expected  to  be  not  only  a  prophet,  a  priest,  and  a 


THE  FUTURE  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE        299 

sage,  but  also  a  king.  But  the  representation  as  king  was 
only  an  adaptation  to  the  monarchy  under  which  the 
idea  had  its  birth.  When  he  came,  he  was  no  king  in 
any  sense  that  had  been  expected.  His  was  a  democratic 
spirit;  democracy  has  no  place  for  a  king.  The  dream 
of  the  Old  Testament  Theocracy  was  of  this  Messiah, 
the  expected  one,  by  whose  hand  wrong  should  be  set 
right,  the  high  ones  cast  down,  the  lowly  lifted  up.  And 
all  the  while  prophets  and  priests  and  sages  were  living 
and  working  and  hastening  forward  the  realization  of 
this  magnificent  ideal. 

Now  let  the  dream  of  democracy  be  likewise  of  that 
expected  one;  this  time  an  expected  agency  which,  in 
union  with  all  others,  will  usher  in  the  dawn  of  the  day 
when  the  universal  brotherhood  of  man  will  be  under- 
stood and  accepted  by  all  men.  Meanwhile  the  univer- 
sities here  and  there,  in  the  new  world  and  in  the  old, 
the  university  men  who  occupy  high  places  throughout 
the  earth;  the  university  spirit  which,  with  every  decade, 
dominates  the  world  more  fully,  will  be  doing  the  work 
of  the  prophet,  the  priest,  and  the  philosopher  of  democ- 
racy, and  will  continue  to  do  that  work  until  it  shall  be 
finished,  until  a  purified  and  exalted  democracy  shall 
have  become  universal. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Absolute  standards  of  morals, 
fallacy  of,  233,  235. 

Academic  type,  function  of, 
270;    traits  of,  255,  259. 

Acton,  Lord,  53. 

Adams,  George  B.,  28. 

Addams,  Jane,  267. 

Aesculapius,  285. 

Alaska  boundary  case  in  com- 
parison with  historical  prob- 
lems, 173. 

Aldrich,  Nelson  W.,  49. 

American  Historical  Associa- 
tion, 28,  67. 

American  Historical  Review,  67. 

Amphictionic  Council,  201. 

Analytic  phase  of  social  science, 
179  ff.,  189,  213,  220. 

Argyle,  Duke  of,  206. 

Attention,  a  function  of  feel- 
ing and  willing,  189,  216; 
significance  of,  in  problem  of 
construction,  264. 

Balance  of  trade  as  criterion 
of  progress,  46. 

Basis,  scientific,  for  construc- 
tion, 266,  269. 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  232. 

Bentley,  A.  F,,   211. 

Bernheim,  Ernst,  29,  149. 

Bible  vs.  activities  of  men  pic- 
tured in  the  Bible,  loi. 

Biological  sociology,  76. 


Biology  "in  imperative  mood," 

47. 
Birth    rate    as    criterion    of 

progress,  46. 
Bismarck,  O.  E.  L.,  251. 
Bloomfield,   Maurice,   35. 
Blucher,  G,  L.,  251. 
Booth,  J.  Wilkes,  219. 
Borromeo,  St.  Charles,  272. 
Bourbonism,  176. 
Breysig,  Kurt,  29. 
Brutus,  219. 
Bryce,  James,  228. 
Business,    as    end   or    means, 

133,  136. 

Cambridge  History,  53. 

Capital  vs.  consumption,  229. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  28,  72. 

Carnegie,  Andrew,  177,  178. 

Carver,  T.  M.,  8. 

Causation,  concept  of,  in  so- 
cial science,  195,  200,  204. 

Centralization  vs.  decentraliza- 
tion in  control  of  capital,  230. 

Century  Dictionary,  104. 

Chamberlain,  Joseph,  49. 

Character  of  individuals  as 
criterion  of  progress,  46. 

Cobden,  Richard,  132. 

Collectivism  in  German  social 
science,  293. 

Comte,  A.,  66,  72,  73,  74,  207. 

Concurrence  of  influences  vs. 


303 


304       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 


sequence  of  events  as  ex- 
planation of  experience,  203, 
209,  218. 

Consciousness,  as  center  of 
attention  for  psychology, 
112. 

Constitutions  as  criteria  of 
progress,  46. 

Construction  vs.  evaluation  as 
function  of  academic   men, 

253  ff- 
Constructive  phase  of   social 

science,  189,  224,  244,  260. 
Consumption  vs.  capital,  229. 
Co-operation  of  social  sciences, 

sociologists'  interest  in,  153. 
Cor  day,  Charlotte,  219. 
Creationism  vs.  evolution,  141. 
Criticism,  historical,  meaning 

of,  215. 

Darwin,  Charles,  76,  139,  140, 
141. 

Decadence  vs.  progress,  46. 

Declaration  of  Independence, 
223. 

Decentralization  vs.  centraliza- 
tion of  control  of  capital,  230. 

Deficit,  economic  significance 
of,  128. 

Demand,  economic,  a  frag- 
ment of  moral  history,  45. 

Democracy,  function  of  univer- 
sity toward,  296. 

Descriptive  phase  of  social 
science,  149  ff.,  189,  215,  220, 
230. 


Disunity  of  social  science,  23, 
32,  52,  116. 

Economic  harmonies,   75. 

Economic  man,  unreality  of, 
124. 

Edison,  Thomas  A.,  285. 

English  experience,  essentials 
of,  97. 

Enriques,  F.,  54. 

Ethnology  and  history,  44. 

Eucken,  Rudolf,  206. 

Euclid,  285. 

Eugenics,  undetermined  aim 
of,  48. 

Evaluating  phase  of  social 
science,  189,  214  ff.,  244, 
ff.,  251,  523  ff. 

Evaluation,  function  of,  in 
science,  214,  216,  217,  220 
ff.,  224,  228;  in  social 
science,  ultimate  available 
appeal,  237  ff.,  242;  prob- 
lem of  passage  from,  to  con- 
struction, 260  ff.;  vs.  con- 
struction as  function  of 
academic  men,  253  ff. 

Evaluative  process,  descrip- 
tion of,  247. 

Evolution  vs.  creationism,  141. 

Evolution  of  human  values, 
137,  145, 146,  157, 193. 

Experience,  a  connected  whole, 
25 ;  as  evolution  of  purposes, 
88;    composite  character  of, 


INDEX 


305 


Explanation  of  history,  185, 
190,  200. 

Feeling,  a  function  of  attention 
and  volition,  189,  216. 

Ferrero,  G.,  188. 

Flint,  Robert,  149. 

Formula  of  human  experience, 
meaning  of  the  conception, 
117. 

Fourier,  F.  M.  C,  71. 

France,  desiderata  in  studying 
history  of,  159  ff. 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  iii. 

French  Republic,  46. 

French  Revolution,  208. 

Freund,  Ernst,  268. 

Frontier  of  social  science,  212. 

Functional  groups,  signil&cance 
of,  in  social  science,  198. 

Function  essential  in  descrip- 
tion, 160. 

Future  of  social  science,  2725. 

Galton,  Sir  Francis,  47. 

Geographers,  misconception  of, 
150. 

German  social  science,  collect- 
ivism vs.  individualism  in, 

293. 
Germany,   factors   in   history 

of,  IS  ff. 
Giddings,  F.  H.,  198. 
Gildersleeve,  Basil  L.,  35. 
Goethe,  J.  W.,  285. 
Government  vs.  men  seeking 

control,  106. 


Greek  and  Latin  vs.  thought 
and  civilization,  100. 

Hall,  G.  Stanley,  36. 

Hamilton,  Sir  William,  235. 

Hamlet,  hypothetical  prob- 
lems of,  221 

Harmonies,  economic,  75. 

Harper,  William  R.,  295  ff. 

Hedonism,  fallacy  of,  233. 

Helmolt,  H.  F.,  53. 

Henderson,  Charles  R.,  268. 

Henry,  Patrick,  188. 

History  and  ethnology,  44;  as 
abstraction  from  experience 
vs.  correlation  of  all  expe- 
rience, in;  as  "science"  or 
method,  iii;  definition  of, 
29;  educative  value  of,  217; 
incompleteness  of,  13,  27; 
laws  of,  180, 184,  201. 

Homer,  285. 

Independent  social  sciences, 
crudity  of  conception,  154. 

Institute  of  social  science,  156, 
177,  207,  227,  230,  232,  295. 

Interpretation  of  experience, 
possibility  of,  121,  202. 

James,  William,  199. 

Jevons,  W.  Stanley,  54. 

Johns  Hopkins  University, 
early  methods  of,  in  social 
science,  35,  36,  38,  177. 

Jordan,  David  Starr,  45. 

Jordan,  Edward  O.,  268. 


3o6       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 


Kant,  Immanuel,  53,  200,  232. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  71. 
Koch,  Robert,  286. 

Lafayette,  175. 

Lamprecht,  Karl,  29. 

Laplace,  P.  S.,  73,  77- 

Laws,  as  criteria  of  progress, 
46;  of  history,  180,  184,  201. 

Lear,  hypothetical  problems 
of,  221. 

Lee,  Robert  E.,  160. 

Liquor  traffic,  as  illustrative 
of  social  complexity,  62. 

Loeb,  J.,  209. 

Logic,  of  social  science,  indif- 
ference of  social  scientists  to, 
146. 

Louis  XV,  169. 

Louis  XVI,  158,  165,  169,  174, 
207. 

Luther,  Martin,  293. 

Machiavelli,  228. 

Manchester  School,  132. 

Marshall,  Alfred,  109. 

Mathematical  sociology,  72. 

McCarthy,  Charles,  268. 

Mead,  George  H.,  268. 

Medical  training,  analogy 
with  preparation  for  social 
science,  210. 

Men,  variability  of,  144. 

Merriam,  Charles  E.,  268. 

Methodological  phases  of  so- 
cial sciences,  186. 

Meyer,  B.  H.,  268. 


Mill,  J.  S.,  75,  126,  133,  232. 

Modernism,  272,  275. 

Mohl,  R.  von,  66. 

Moltke,  H.  K.  B.,  251. 

Mommsen,  Theodor,  187. 

Montesquieu,  123. 

Morals,  functional  criterion  of, 
236  ff . ;  theory  of,  in  course 
of  development,  232. 

Morgan,  J.  P.,  124. 

Miihlbach,  Louisa,  28. 

Napoleon  I,  158,  174. 

Napoleon  III,  46. 

Natural  selection,  interrogative 

force  of  phrase,  139. 
Nearing  and  Watson,  125. 
Neurath,  Otto,  52. 
Niebuhr,  B.  G.,  178,  187,  215. 

Ordinance  of  Secession,  223. 

Orientation,  center  of,  in  social 
science,  86,  94,  114,  116. 

Othello,  hypothetical  prob- 
lems of,  221, 

Owen,  Robert,  71. 

Paul,  the  apostle,  264. 

Perfectionism,  fallacy  of,  233. 

Pierson,  Carl,  54. 

Plato,  258. 

PoHtical  economy,  aim  of, 
227;  and  the  abstraction 
"wealth,"  109. 

PoHtical  science,  aim  of,  227; 
vs.  men  controlling  and  con- 
trolled, 104. 


INDEX 


307 


Pretentiousness  in  science,  266. 

Process  vs.  chronological  se- 
quence, 218. 

Production  of  wealth  as  cri- 
terion of  progress,  46;  vs. 
distribution,  as  center  of 
attention  in  economic  theory, 

130- 

Progress  and  poverty  in  social 
science,  34. 

Progress,  economic  goal  of, 
131;  lack  of  scientific  cri- 
terion of,  47;  vs.  decadence, 
46. 

Property  vs.  men  assisting  one 
another,  no. 

Prosperity,  as  economic  cate- 
gory, 126, 

Psychic  forces,  as  social  causes, 
200. 

Psychology,  in  attention  to 
* '  consciousness, "  112;  re- 
lation to  social  science,  31. 

Publicity  in  social  science,  43. 

Purposes,  evolution  of,  88. 

Pyramids,  188. 

Ranke,  Leopold,  187. 
Ratzenhofer,  Gustav,  199. 
Reconstruction  Acts,  223. 
Reinsch,  Paul  S.,  108,  268. 
Religion,    relation    to    social 

science,  275;   theological  vs. 

positive,  276. 
Revolution,  American,  causes 

of,  183,  187,  189. 
Revolutions,  theory  of,  182. 


Ricardo,  David,  75. 
Ritual  vs.  tool,  216. 
Robertson,  Frederick  W.,  71. 
Robespierre,  161. 
Robinson,  James  H.,  28. 
Ross,  E.  A.,  211. 
Rousseau,  J.  J.,  161. 
Ruskin,  John,  71. 

Sacrament,  social  science  the 
holiest,  277. 

Savigny,  F.  K.,  248. 

Schaffle,  A.,  79. 

Schmoller,  G.,  45,  52,  149, 
293  ff. 

Science,  historical  stages  of, 
56;  ultimate  value  of,  213, 
224,  260,  290. 

Scientific  basis  for  construc- 
tion, 266,  269. 

Secession,  American,  of  1861, 
causes  of,  183. 

Sectarianism  in  science,  266. 

Senate,  Roman,  201. 

Sentimental  sociology,  71. 

Sequence  of  events  vs.  con- 
currence of  influences  as 
explanation  of  experience, 
203,  209,  218. 

Servile  revolt,  Roman,  196. 

Simmel,  G.,  279. 

Smith,  Adam,  54,  133,  239. 

Social  process,  trend  of,  284  ff. 

Social  science  a  reflection  of 
the  whole  human  process, 
26;  cardinal  phases  of,  185; 
constructive   phase  of,  189, 


3o8       THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 


224;  disunity  of,  23,  32,  53, 
116;  frontier  of,  212;  future 
of,  272  ff.;  immaturity  of, 
23,  152;  method  of,  273; 
problem  of,  89;  relation 
of,  to  religion,  275;  the  holi- 
est sacrament,  277;  unity  of, 
I,  9,  29,  52,  62,  84,  87,  290. 

Social  sciences  adjusted  to 
demand  of  schools,  155; 
evaluation  of,  228  ff.;  func- 
tion of,  18,  22,  89,  120,  156, 
278,  281,  290;  as  terms  of 
one  formula,  116  ff. 

Society  vs.  men  associating, 
112. 

Sociological  vocabulary,  tool 
value  of,  212. 

Sociology,  aim  of,  227;  an 
emphasis  upon  neglected 
factors  in  social  science,  7, 
9;  "a  science  of  left-overs," 
8;  attitude  of  scholars  to- 
ward, 6;  contradictory  ob- 
jections to,  69,  99;  function 
of,  4,  207;  in  relation  to 
imity  of  social  science,  55; 
place  of,  in  social  science, 
30;  successive  types  of,  68 
ff.;  vs.  theology,  272. 

Sombart,  W.,  279. 

Sovereignty  vs.  men  making 
civic  adjustments,  108. 

Specialization  in  social  science, 
results  of,  34,  38. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  79,  82,  83, 
206,  232. 


Sphinx,  188. 
Sumner,  Charles,  132. 
Sumner,  William  G.,  206,  209. 
Surplus,  economic,  in  Ameri- 
ca, 130. 

Tariff  commission,  problem  of, 
49. 

Tariff,  social  meaning  of,  49. 

Taxation,  social  meaning  of,  51. 

Team-work,  absence  of,  in 
social  science,  32,  47,  50,  51; 
essential  in  social  science,  21; 
in  social  science,  illustra- 
tion of,  23,  35,  40. 

Theological  vs.  positive  reli- 
gions, 276. 

Theology  vs.  sociology,  272. 

Thibaut,  A.  F.  J.,  248. 

Thomas,  William  I.,  206,  209. 

Time  consciousness  in  social 
science,  188,  226. 

Tool  vs.  ritual,  216. 

Treitschke,  Heinrich,  293. 

Trend  of  the  social  process, 
284  ff. 

Trees,  "science"  of,  25. 

Tufts,  James  H.,  268. 

Unity  of  social  science,  i,  9, 
29,  52,  62,  84,  87,  290. 

University,  function  of,  in 
democracy,  296  ff. 

Utilitarianism,  fallacy  of,  233. 

Valuation-groups,  197. 

Valuation,  social,  ultimate  cri- 
terion of,  231. 


INDEX 


309 


Valuations,  scientific,  paucity 
of,  265;  social,  description 
of,  245;  social  function  of, 
193,  19s,  203,  20s,  209; 
varieties  of,  197. 

Verein  fiir  Socialpolitik,  252, 
253,  269. 

Volition,  a  function  of  atten- 
tion and  feeling,  189,  216. 

Walker,  Francis  A.,  67. 
Wallace,  A.  R.,  141. 
Wallis,  Louis,  211. 


Ward,  Lester  F.,  81,  83,  200, 
201. 

Wealth,  as  means  vs.  end,  279; 
vs.  men  as  center  of  atten- 
tion in  political  economy, 
xK>9  ff. 

Wholeness  of  human  experi- 
ence, 116. 

Williams,  J.  M.,  211. 

Witanagemot,  201. 

Wundt,  W.,  52,  i49> 

Young,  Arthur,  167. 


Q 


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